The Silent Boy Read online

  Or had some other person or persons taken him? The only other person known to have an interest in him was his uncle Rampton. But Rampton had sent Savill to fetch Charles. He had no reason to snatch away a boy he believed he was about to have by perfectly straightforward and legal means.

  Who else, then? Someone connected with Charles’s past life in Paris? With the murder of his mother by the mob?

  ‘Let us ring the bell, sir,’ the Vicar said. ‘We must pay our reckoning and go back.’

  ‘You go back, sir,’ Savill said.

  ‘What? Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I shall ride to the turnpike road and try to find a scent of them there.’

  ‘But they have six or seven hours’ start of you. It will soon be dark. They could be anywhere by now.’

  ‘I shall get a description of their chaise from the ostler here, and then I shall enquire at the turnpikes. If not there, then at the post-houses along the road. Someone must have seen them pass and, if they’re going any distance, they will be obliged to change horses. I shall take the mare but send her back at the first opportunity. Pray make my excuses at Charnwood, Doctor.’

  ‘But, sir,’ Gohlis said, ‘the Count will want to discuss with you what is best to be done.’

  Savill closed the spyglass and dropped it in his pocket.

  ‘And pardon me, sir,’ Dr Gohlis said, ‘I believe we shall need the glass as well.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the Vicar said. ‘Almost certainly it is evidence material to the case. It may be of the highest importance.’

  Savill stood up and bowed. ‘You may well be in the right of it, sir. Which is why I shall take it. But let us not quarrel. I shall give a receipt for the glass, and return it to you at the first opportunity.’

  Mr Horton’s amiability vanished. ‘This kidnapping was in Norbury, sir. The spyglass was found there. You must surrender it to my keeping. I insist.’

  Savill slipped his hand in his pocket and took out the warrant he had shown the Vicar in the morning. He held it up but did not unfold it.

  ‘You know it is not in your power to do that, sir.’

  There was silence, too long for comfort. The doctor looked from Savill to Horton and then stared out of the window.

  ‘If you’re going, sir,’ the Vicar said at last, ‘then the sooner the better, I suppose.’

  Horton and Gohlis came out with him to the stableyard, where they stood in silence while Savill talked to the old ostler. Afterwards, the three of them exchanged polite but wintry farewells.

  ‘But your baggage, sir,’ said Dr Gohlis, with sudden agitation. ‘It is still at Charnwood. Surely you will need it on the road?’

  ‘Thank you, I have everything I require.’ Savill had his papers in one inside pocket of his coat and Mr Rampton’s gold was weighing down the other, making him feel permanently lopsided. ‘But would you be so good as to ask Monsieur Fournier to send it on to me? I will write to him with my direction in London.’

  As he turned the mare’s head towards the road, Savill looked down at the Vicar and, feeling a sudden awkwardness, said: ‘One more thing, sir. Pray give my adieux to Miss Horton and thank her for her kindness to Charles.’

  ‘A closed chaise,’ Savill said two hours later. The light was already draining from a grey sky heavy with rain clouds. ‘Black or dark brown. A pair of horses, both dun-coloured.’

  The woman who kept the turnpike shrugged. ‘Could be, sir. But we’ve had a score or so come through since morning, and after a while you can’t tell one from another, so long as they pay their tuppences like good Christians.’

  ‘The man who drove it had a brown topcoat.’ He remembered suddenly what Mrs Fenner had said about Plimming. ‘A servant with an eye for the ladies.’

  ‘Oh – him!’ She was a buxom woman with a baby on the crook of her arm. ‘Londoner, I reckon. Full of impudence. Wanted to pay the toll in kisses.’ She turned her head away and spat.

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. After breakfast, before dinner. Baby was asleep until the chaise went through, I can tell you that, because the gate banged – which was that man’s fault because he drove too close and the wheel knocked it.’

  The baby was awake now and staring with calm curiosity at Savill.

  ‘A charming child, ma’am. Pray, would you accept this to buy him a trinket of some sort?’

  ‘Her, sir.’ The woman took the shilling.

  Savill bowed. ‘I beg Miss’s pardon. I suppose you couldn’t hazard a guess where they might have been going?’

  It was a long shot and he was not surprised when she shook her head. He was losing the woman’s attention now. The baby was shifting on her arm, her mouth puckering in distress.

  ‘Up to London, maybe? That’s where they came from, the other day.’

  The baby twisted against her and vomited milk over her shoulder. The shilling’s worth of goodwill had run out. The woman turned away.

  At the next post-house, four miles further on, Savill made enquiries and spent Mr Rampton’s money with a liberal hand. He learned that Irwin’s chaise had stopped there nearly seven hours earlier to change horses.

  It was raining hard and it would soon be completely dark. Savill’s body ached, for he was not much accustomed to riding now, and he was starving, for he had eaten nothing since Mrs Fenner’s mutton chop. He ordered supper. While he was eating, he decided to spend the night at the inn. He was dog-tired and, even on a post road, it would not be easy or indeed safe for a single horseman to ride through the night.

  He made arrangements to return the grey mare to Charnwood in the morning. After a brief internal debate, he decided that it would be both prudent and comfortable to hire a chaise with the assistance of Mr Rampton’s guineas, and to travel post up to London. Having settled on a light chaise and hired a man to drive him, he left orders to be called an hour before dawn.

  Despite his weariness, he slept fitfully. The empty socket in his mouth was hurting, though not as badly as before. But he missed Dr Gohlis’s drops, which he had left in his portmanteau at Charnwood. Their absence gnawed at him.

  While he was trying to sleep, his attention drifted to Harriet Horton, immured in her father’s vicarage. A handsome woman, he thought. It was curious that she had not married before. She must have had offers.

  Intelligent, too. Younger than he was, which was no bad thing in a wife, but not a foolish girl, either, but a woman of sense. He wondered whether she had any money of her own.

  For everything was different, now Augusta was dead.

  There was a close-knit and close-lipped fraternity among the men who made their living travelling up and down the great roads that led to London. This worked to Savill’s advantage, for the groom he hired to drive him proved an ally worth having.

  He was a weathered man with stooping shoulders and an acquaintance at every inn, and in every stable. He knew who was to be trusted, who was a knave and who was a fool. He knew to a penny the price to pay for information, and when it was better to offer promises or even confidences in lieu of money. On foot, he seemed permanently tipsy, though this never proceeded to drunkenness. With reins in his hands, however, he became the model of sobriety.

  Savill told him something that approximated the truth during their first hour together on the road: that he was in pursuit of his son, who, owing to a dispute about a legacy, had been taken by a thieving relative who had no love for the boy.

  The groom spat an arc of glittering tobacco juice towards the verge. ‘They took my son, too, sir.’

  ‘What? I don’t understand.’

  ‘My son. Press gang took him.’

  ‘That was cruel indeed.’

  ‘A son needs his father,’ the groom said. ‘Father needs his son.’

  At every halt they made, Savill worried that they would find they had lost the scent, that Irwin had turned off and gone north or south where he and Charles would soon vanish in the immensity of the country. But when they stopped
at an inn along the road, the groom would sidle into the stable or the kitchen or the bar the ostlers used. In a while he would emerge with a slightly more unsteady gait, bringing news of Norbury’s chaise. In this manner they traced him from Chippenham to Marlborough, from Newbury to Slough.

  Here they had a piece of luck when they enquired about the chaise they were following. Irwin had changed horses here too and demanded brandy to be brought while he was waiting. One of the inn’s ostlers had recognized the chaise by the door handles, which were of a curiously intricate design and were the very devil to clean.

  Better than that, he knew where it came from. The chaise belonged to the Swan With Two Necks in Ladd Lane, where the man had worked until his marriage last year brought him to Slough.

  They pressed on to London. It was nearly eight in the evening when they passed through the Hyde Park Gate and plunged into the roar of Piccadilly.

  In the City, they made their way to St Paul’s and then turned north towards Ladd Lane. The groom eased the chaise into the yard of the inn.

  The establishment was thronged with travellers and their friends, with servants and horses and coaches. The people of the inn were reluctant to answer questions about their customers. Savill was obliged to show Rampton’s warrant to the landlord, as well as to spend liberally while he was there.

  At last, at about ten o’clock in the evening, he was able to inspect the chaise that Irwin had travelled in. It had been in the stable since nine o’clock that morning. In the meantime it had been cleaned, inside and out, and was now waiting to be hired. There was nothing to be learned from it whatsoever.

  ‘A boy? Not that I recall,’ said the clerk who had taken the ticket and paid back the deposit on the chaise. ‘But God knows, there are enough boys around the place as it is, and what’s one more?’

  ‘Who did you pay the deposit to?’

  The clerk had a sad face and watery eyes. He wore a grey coat made some years earlier with someone larger in mind. After a moment’s consideration, he said: ‘Just a man, sir.’

  ‘A gentleman?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see him arrive?’

  ‘As it happens, sir, I did. I chanced to be in the yard at the time. He was driving.’

  Savill took out his purse.

  ‘Who was with him?’

  ‘No one, sir. The chaise was empty.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because I am obliged to inspect the vehicles, inside and out, sir, when they are returned. No one got out in the yard. And there was no one inside.’

  Savill placed a shilling on the table. He did not put the purse away.

  ‘And were you there when the chaise was hired?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir.’ The clerk inserted a finger in his ear and rotated it. ‘I’m always here.’

  ‘Who made the booking? The same man?’

  ‘No, sir. A gentleman. A Mr Irwin.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Not a young man, not old, either. He had black hair, I remember that.’

  Savill laid another shilling on the table. ‘Did he give you his direction in London?’

  ‘Of course, sir. Henrietta Street, by Covent Garden. Number twenty-three, the first floor front.’ The clerk smiled. ‘Not that it signifies.’

  Savill’s patience slipped away. ‘What the devil do you mean?’

  ‘The chaise was late back, sir. And when I went to Henrietta Street to enquire after him, the woman that keeps the house had never heard of him.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  When Charles wakes, it is broad daylight. Stripes of sunlight cross the floor and march up the wall opposite the window. The shutters are closed but they are crudely made and warped. The sun finds its way around them.

  Something nearby is scratching and rustling.

  He is lying on the floor with a pile of blankets weighing him down. They smell mouldy. His clothes feel damp. He is thirsty and there is a painful vacancy inside him that he knows is hunger.

  Most of all, he wants to piss. But he hasn’t wet himself, he finds, and the discovery makes him briefly happy. He lifts his hand and lays it palm downwards on the nearest golden stripe. There’s no warmth to it.

  The scratching and rustling stop.

  ‘Awake at last?’

  Charles struggles into a sitting position. The man in the blue coat is sitting at a table by the window with a pen in his hand. His face is both blotchy and pale, like stained linen. He looks very tired.

  ‘It won’t be long now.’ He holds up the paper. ‘I shall send a letter. And then we shall wait.’ A screech of laughter, swiftly muted. ‘We shall entertain ourselves as best we can.’

  There are stale rolls to eat, water to drink and a pot to piss in. The sun goes in and Charles hears rain pattering on the roof, mingling with the cries of seagulls. Occasionally there are voices, men calling to one another, but too far away for him to make out the words.

  The man eats at the table, adding brandy to his water. Charles squats on his blankets and watches.

  He guesses that they are still beside the river. The man rowed them here at dawn. The boat itself is beneath them, for this room is perched above the water, with the mooring enclosed beneath them on all sides except that which faces the river. A door at the side leads to a flight of steps down to the water’s edge.

  After breakfast the man throws water on his face and makes an attempt to brush his blue coat. He opens the door of the cupboard built into the wall beside the fireplace. It is tall enough for him to walk into. There are empty shelves on either side of a central gangway and a rusting rat-trap in one corner.

  He puts the water jug and the last of the rolls on one of the shelves. He turns, frowning, towards Charles but then changes his mind and dives down to the chamber pot. He opens a window overlooking the river and empties the pot into the river. He places the pot in the cupboard beside the rat-trap on the floor.

  ‘Now you,’ he says. ‘In you go. Don’t be afraid.’

  He takes Charles by the shoulder and pushes him into the cupboard. He throws a blanket after him.

  ‘I could tie you up and gag you,’ he says. ‘But I’m not a cruel man, you know that, don’t you? Truly, on my word, I’m not.’ He sounds worried that Charles might think him cruel. ‘I wish you no harm, not in the slightest.’ He stands back, hand on the door. ‘This is better, isn’t it? You’ll manage famously. You’re too old to mind the dark. You’ll be quite comfortable. But don’t make a noise, I beg you.’ The chicken screech of laughter bubbles out of his mouth. ‘Not that anyone will hear you if you do.’

  In the old days, when Maman was alive and they lived in Paris, Charles had been afraid of the dark. He liked to have a light burning as he slept. His mother had indulged him with a special candle that burned very dimly and very slowly. It was enclosed in a lantern with a heavy base so it could not be easily overturned, and placed on the mantelpiece in his chamber.

  Nowadays, there is no one to light a candle for him at night. Besides, he is no longer afraid of the dark. There are so many other things that terrify him even more. The dark, his old enemy, has become almost a friend.

  When the footsteps have faded away, Charles sits very still for as long as it takes to count two hundred breaths. Occasionally the building creaks. Gulls cry, their voices muffled by the walls. There is also a noise in the background, continuous, fluctuating, too faint to identify. Perhaps it is the wind or the river. There are no other sounds.

  Draughts swirl up through the floorboards, bringing with them the smells of the river.

  The cupboard is not entirely dark. A thin rectangle of light shows between the door and its frame. A thin vertical crack runs down the lower panel of the door, admitting a line of daylight. The keyhole glows. Charles squints between door and frame at the room beyond where they slept and ate. There is nothing to see but the corner of the table.

  As the minutes pass, Charles’s eyes adapt. He makes out the side of the water j
ug where its lustre catches the light and reflects it back. The chamber pot is a dark suggestion of itself upon the floor. Beside it is the rat-trap.

  Charles gathers facts. The cupboard is approximately one and a half paces wide and two and a half paces long. The height is harder to estimate, especially in the near dark, but he guesses it must be three to four paces.

  He examines the shelves, trailing his fingers over each one, covering every inch of the surface, moving from top to bottom and from left to right. He finds dust, fragments of plaster and tangles of spiders’ webs that cling to his skin. He disturbs something that moves under his fingertips. Woodlice, perhaps. He wonders if he could bring himself to eat them if the man does not come back.

  Finally he searches the floor. Under one shelf there is a knothole in the floorboard, which allows in some light. He lies on his belly and manages to get his eye to the knothole. He is looking into the boathouse itself, at the shimmer of water.

  The skiff they came in is still there, rocking slowly up and down. The side of the boathouse towards the river is open, but fringed by alders, which have grown to make an arch over the water. Their leaves filter green light into the gloom below. He cannot see the river beyond the trees.

  Last of all he comes to the chamber pot and the rat-trap. The trap is a crudely made thing of wire that rests on a heavy wooden base. He runs his finger along the side. The metal parts are rough to the touch because they have rusted. He cannot see anything inside but, just to be sure, he picks up the contraption and shakes it. It rattles slightly and something metallic falls to the floor.

  He brushes his fingers through the grit until he finds what it is: a nail, about two inches long. At one end it curves into a right angle. It is something to play with, though Charles can barely see what he’s doing with it. Using it as a pen, he scratches his name on one of the shelves.