The Silent Boy Page 18

  As he reaches the trees, a momentary doubt touches him. He clambers over the stile and pauses, peering into the gloom ahead. The ground is sodden with dew and yesterday’s rain. It is colder and greyer than in the garden. He screws up his courage and plods on, reminding himself that it will be worth it in the end, when he and Louis are living together, wild boys in the woods, talking to each other with silent words.

  Charles reaches the castle, the mound among the trees that is almost entirely surrounded by the stream. This will be their desert island, he reminds himself, and when they are living here he will tell Louis the story of Robinson Crusoe.

  He drapes the cloaks over a branch. He adds the veal-and-ham pie to the items concealed in the hollow in the yew tree which has become his cupboard. As a reward, he allows himself to break off a fragment of pastry. It dissolves in a moment, adding to his hunger rather than diminishing it.

  Everything is orderly, Charles thinks, everything is planned, everything is known. Mr Crusoe would approve.

  He makes his way back to Charnwood. As he is running down the path from the woods to the Garden of Neptune, he hears the sound of hooves. He stops, resting his hand on the gate into the garden.

  His eyes drift over the trees to the hills beyond the wood, which at this time of day are grey smudges against the paler grey of the sky. From here one can see a stretch of the track that crosses into the next valley. A rider is approaching. He is too far away for Charles to be able to distinguish anything about him, beyond the fact that he wears a blue coat.

  He passes into the garden. The stable clock is striking eight. Charles’s breakfast is waiting for him in the housekeeper’s room. Mrs Cox isn’t there.

  She does not like to watch him eating, and nor do the other servants. They treat him as if he was a wild animal, he thinks, dirty and unwanted. They are afraid, perhaps, afraid that the terrible thing locked up inside him might somehow be infectious, that the thing is catching, like measles.

  Perhaps it is.

  The long day passes. At last it is evening, and Charles is alone in Mrs Cox’s room, eating bread and cheese by the light of a single candle. There was also a slice of cold beef rimmed with yellow fat on the plate, but he has put that in the pocket of his breeches for tomorrow.

  When he has finished, he eases his chair away from the table. There is a spare key to the back door hidden behind the clock. He is about to dart across the room and take it when he hears footsteps. The door handle rattles. Mrs Cox bustles into the room.

  ‘You’ve had your supper,’ she says in her creaky voice. ‘Why are you sitting there like a great lump?’

  It is an accusation, not a question.

  ‘You’re wanted in the library,’ she says. Candle in hand, she comes closer and stares down at him. ‘Look at the state of you. Come with me.’

  He follows her into the kitchen and then out into the scullery, where the dirty plates are piled high from dinner. The kitchen maid scrubs his face and hands at the sink and wipes his coat with a damp cloth.

  When Mrs Cox is satisfied, she herself runs a comb through his hair, tugging the tines through the tangles so forcefully that he cries out and the tears come again to his eyes.

  ‘He can squeal, ma’am,’ the maid says to Mrs Cox. ‘I never knew that. Sounds like a piglet, doesn’t he?’

  Mrs Cox stands back, hands on hips, and stares at him. ‘I wish he was a piglet. Pigs are useful.’

  Charles feels the eyes of the adults on him. He looks at the fire. The flames are slipping and sliding like tongues through the gaps in the bars of the log basket. The fire is talking fire language.

  Monsieur de Quillon is there and Monsieur Fournier. The Count’s voice booms and crashes at Mr Savill, who sits by the fire and says little in reply. As the Count talks, his great red face twitches. Cracks and craters appear in the skin.

  Sometimes Monsieur Fournier speaks, and his voice is soft and high, almost like a woman’s. Dr Gohlis sits on a chair by the door and does not say anything at all.

  Charles does not bother to listen to the conversation of the grown-ups. He has heard what they have to say to each other so often before. All it comes down to is this: that Mr Savill wants him, and so does the Count. Charles has no more interest in the outcome of the discussion than the rope has in the outcome of a tug of war.

  Instead he watches the shadows that the fire and the candles throw on the walls. He talks in his mind to Louis.

  At long last they ring for Mrs Cox. Mr Savill says that Charles must retire, for he will have a long day tomorrow.

  The great difficulty is the spare key to the back door. In an hour or two, Mrs Cox will lock the door of her room and retire to bed. The key will be inaccessible until morning. But by then it will be too late.

  Charles asks Louis for advice. But Louis only says that Charles must be bold and resolute, which is true but not useful.

  So he must do it all himself.

  In his chamber he undresses down to his shirt and climbs into bed. He waits for half an hour, measured by the chimes of the stable clock. He leaves his bed and tiptoes from his chamber to the head of the back staircase.

  He stands and listens to the sounds below, funnelling up from the service wing of the house. Draughts swirl around his ankles.

  Downstairs they are preparing for supper. He hears footsteps passing along the passage, a clattering of plates and pans and once, quite distinctly, Joseph swearing at Susan for getting in his way and making him spill the soup.

  Charles knows that he must not rush. He goes back to his bedroom and waits. Later, when he returns to his post at the head of the stairs, it is quieter below. He guesses that they are now serving supper. The cook and the kitchen maid will be in the kitchen.

  And Mrs Cox?

  He slips down the stairs. He goes slowly, testing every step before he puts his weight on it. He cannot risk a candle.

  The door at the bottom of the stairs is ajar. The passage beyond is empty. Mrs Cox’s voice is raised in anger, upbraiding someone in the kitchen.

  Charles emerges into the passage. His bare feet make no sound. They are now so cold he can hardly feel them.

  Mrs Cox’s door is unlocked. Inside the room, it is almost dark. The only light comes from a dying fire. He crosses to the fireplace and takes the key, which has a head like a three-leafed clover. He slips it through the neck of the shirt and holds it under his left arm.

  As he is leaving the room, Mary Ann rushes through the kitchen doorway with a dish in her hands. When she sees Charles, she shrieks, drops it and cowers against the wall. The dish shatters and syllabub spatters the flagstones.

  Immediately there are footsteps and voices. The passage fills with servants.

  Charles remembers a girl from the country who helped Jeanne when he was a very little boy. The girl was strange in the head, Jeanne said, and had to be sent away, though she was quite harmless. He imitates her in one of her strange times.

  He ignores everyone. His face blank, both arms clamped against his body, he walks slowly and stiffly towards the door to the stairs. His eyes are wide open and fixed straight ahead.

  The servants fall back.

  ‘Will you look at him, ma’am?’ Susan says in a hushed voice. ‘He’s like a ghost.’

  ‘Charles!’ Mrs Cox says. ‘Master Charles! What do you think you’re doing?’

  He ignores her. Slowly and deliberately, he climbs the stairs.

  ‘Come here at once, you wicked boy.’

  Charles continues to climb. He senses the servants clustering at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘He’s bewitched!’ Mary Ann shrieks.

  ‘Don’t be foolish, girl,’ Mrs Cox says. ‘Hold your tongue.’

  ‘He’s sleepwalking,’ Joseph says suddenly. ‘You can see it in his face. My brother used to do it.’

  Charles hears someone gasp.

  ‘He don’t know we’re here, ma’am. He’s in another place.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ says Mrs Cox
in a voice that lacks its usual assurance. ‘But he’s also on the back stairs.’

  ‘Leave him be,’ Joseph advises. ‘If you wake him now, he could run amok. That’s what my granny said.’

  Mrs Cox and Joseph follow at a safe distance. The light from Joseph’s candle runs ahead, showing Charles the steps before him. He walks slowly along the landing and turns into his own chamber.

  He does not close the door. He climbs awkwardly into bed and allows the key to slip away from him, under his body. He draws the tails of his shirt around him. He is so cold his teeth begin to chatter. He clenches them to keep them quiet. He closes his eyes and breathes evenly.

  Mrs Cox and Joseph linger in the doorway with the candle.

  ‘He’ll sleep now,’ Joseph says. ‘In the morning he won’t remember anything. That’s what always happens.’

  ‘Mad,’ Mrs Cox says. ‘Quite mad. I always thought so. He could murder us in our beds. Thank God he’s going in the morning.’

  When they have left him alone, Charles hides the key under his pillow. He is obliged to leave his bed again because tonight of all nights it is important that he does the counting and checking with particular care.

  The window, Charles knows, is a particularly weak spot in his defences. There is nothing he can do about the ash tree if it starts tapping on the glass again and trying to get in.

  Tip-tap.

  When the job is done, Charles scrambles into bed, curls himself into a ball with his knees up to his chest. He shuts his eyes but that is no use for instead he sees blood-red curtains behind his eyelids.

  He summons Louis, and talks to him. He makes Louis say that there will be no blood in their castle in the woods. Louis says this so often that Charles almost believes him.

  Gradually the sounds of the house diminish. Charles cannot afford to fall asleep because he might not wake up early enough.

  Then, just as his eyelids are growing heavy and his mind is wandering, someone walks along the landing and stops at his door.

  The door creaks as it opens. Charles holds his breath and opens his eyes. The light from a candle streams across the floor, dazzling him. Behind the flame is a great shadow.

  Slowly the footsteps approach, bringing the shadow with it and the faintest odour of brandy. From the darkness comes a great, gusty sigh.

  ‘Oh, my son,’ whispers the Count. ‘Oh, my son.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Despite his intention to stay awake, Charles falls asleep. The night is crowded with dreams of monsters and blood, of Marie, his old nurse who has lost her comforting smell, and the great house in the Rue du Bac.

  Words drift in and out of his mind: Oh, my son. Oh, my son.

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

  Other sounds too.

  Tip-tap.

  Then, once again, he’s half awake: the branches are scratching on the windowpane, it’s raining blood, and the blood falls on him like red rain. The blood is screaming just as it always does.

  Do you understand? Say nothing. Ever.

  Quite suddenly Charles is fully awake. It is dark but there is a hint of grey, a faint glimmering pallor that takes the edge from the night. He feels perfectly refreshed.

  He discovers that he has not wet the bed. A good omen.

  He dresses in the dark. He puts on all his clothes, including three shirts and three pairs of stockings. The key is heavy in the pocket of his breeches.

  Carrying his shoes, he slips out of the room. Memory and touch guide him along the landing and down the back stairs.

  The kitchen is a damp cavern. The fire is out. He has never seen the room without people.

  It is so dark that Charles knocks his leg against the table as he crosses to the door. He cries out. In a sudden panic – what if the kitchen maid is stirring? – he fumbles for the bolts for nearly half a minute before he finds them. They screech as he pulls them back.

  The chill of the outside air makes him gasp. He walks to the stables, which are in complete darkness like the house itself. Fortunately there are no dogs at Charnwood. In the yard, there’s no sign of movement from the donkey’s shed in the corner. But the old mare hears him when he opens the stable door: she shifts in her stall at the far end of the row.

  Charles climbs into the empty manger and pushes up the trapdoor. ‘I’m coming,’ he calls softly, ‘I’m coming.’

  Louis says: ‘At last.’

  Charles wriggles into the laboratory and crawls from beneath the table. Louis is a shadow by the window. Charles hugs him.

  Then comes the first great difficulty. Charles lifts Louis. He discovers that an écorché figure – or this one, at least – is far heavier than he expected, partly because the base on which it stands is weighted for stability.

  He drags Louis towards the table. The base bangs against the leg of a chair. He pauses to take stock. Their escape will take far longer than Charles hoped. They will have to adapt the plan.

  He drags aside the table. Holding Louis under the arms, he draws him to the open trap, nudges him, feet first, into the void and lowers him towards the manger.

  Louis’s weight again takes him by surprise. Charles loses his balance. To save himself, he lets go of Louis, who plunges the last few inches to the manger and almost topples out.

  The mare whinnies and shifts in her stall. Charles panics. He scrambles into the manger and tries to find out if Louis is damaged.

  There is a cracking sound. The manger disintegrates. Louis and Charles fall with a crash to the floor, with Louis on top, his shoulder digging into Charles’s face. Wooden slats clatter around and on top of them. Charles cries out. The mare whinnies more loudly.

  Charles forces himself to his hands and knees and then to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Come on.’

  He wraps his arms around Louis and lifts him a few inches from the ground. Charles staggers across the stable to the door.

  ‘You’re so heavy,’ he mutters. ‘I wish you’d help.’

  ‘It’s not my fault I can’t,’ Louis says.

  For a moment they are on the verge of their first quarrel. Charles apologizes. Tears prick against his eyelids.

  Weighed down by his burden, he leaves the stable and crosses the yard. The sky is much lighter now. He fancies he sees a wisp of smoke rising from the kitchen chimney. If the kitchen maid is downstairs, the other servants will soon be about, and Charles’s particular enemy, the red-headed gardener’s boy, will come up the drive from Mrs White’s cottage at the gates.

  He takes the path to the Garden of Neptune. The world fills with soft grey light, cold as charity (a favourite phrase of Mrs Cox’s). The birds have come alive and their conversations fill the air. A cock crows higher up the valley.

  Neptune looks sternly at them as they pass. Charles had imagined this encounter, how he would pause a moment and show Louis the sea god and point out the very spot where the red-headed boy nearly drowned him. But time is running out.

  At the end of the garden, the boys go up the steps, through the gate and along the path into the wood. The leaves are dripping with dew and the ground is soggy. Within moments, both of them are covered with a chilly sheen of moisture.

  Charles discovers that he is hungry. It occurs to him that there is one advantage to the fact that Louis is an écorché figure and is not flesh and blood: he will not want any food.

  It’s the thought of food that makes it possible to move forward, half dragging, half carrying Louis. They are not far from their destination when Charles trips. The impetus of the fall throws both of them into a patch of brambles. A thorn cuts open Charles’s cheek. Even Louis looks scratched and muddy.

  ‘How can we go on from the castle tomorrow?’ Charles demands. ‘You’re so heavy.’

  Their whole plan is in ruins. They had decided to rest at the castle and, as soon as possible, press on into the depths of the woods, to a place so remote that even hermits and wolves never went there. But how can they go anywhe
re if Louis is like this?

  ‘Well? How are we going to manage?’

  Louis stares straight ahead, his expression unchanging and unyielding.

  Something, Charles thinks, has broken. It is not even a proper quarrel. A quarrel needs two people, and Louis says nothing. He can’t or won’t. When Charles tries to speak to him in his mind, Louis refuses to come to life. He has dwindled to an object, a thing without words.

  What is the point of bringing Louis now?

  Nevertheless, Charles struggles onwards through the wood with him, with it. He doesn’t know what else to do except to follow the plan.

  Brambles scourge his face and hands. Branches poke and slap him. Nettles sting his skin. By the time he reaches the castle, the secret place, Charles is exhausted.

  The cloaks are still draped over the branch, black with rain and dew. He stands Louis in the green cave by the fallen branch.

  Charles sits down on the branch and feels in his pocket for the beef he kept back from his supper. It is gone.

  The meat must have fallen from his pocket as they stumbled through the wood, perhaps when they fell into the bramble bush. He looks up at Louis, hoping against hope for help or at least sympathy. But Louis is staring ahead at nothing in particular. His ruined face is wet with rain.

  Charles reaches into the hollow in the yew tree. He finds nothing but damp leaves and twigs.

  With increasing desperation, he searches the hollow. It is no use. The veal-and-ham pie has gone and so has the stale bread. So has the tinderbox, and so has the knife.

  A snake writhes in Charles’s belly. He puts his head in his hands and weeps.

  At present he does not much mind the prospect of dying. But he minds very much the process that will take him there because it must involve him growing hungrier and hungrier. He wants to scream from lack of food. He has nothing left except hunger.

  He knows now that the dream is over, that he and Louis will not live together for ever as wild boys in the woods. Louis is not his friend, not now. He is nothing but an écorché figure, nothing but a thing.