The Silent Boy Read online

  ‘As long as her character does not resemble her mother’s. Let us pray it does not.’

  Savill said nothing.

  ‘Her mother was very beautiful at her age. If Elizabeth takes after her, she will have plenty of suitors. I dare say she will soon be of an age to marry.’

  ‘Should she wish to, sir, yes. If she finds a man who pleases her.’

  ‘If you take my advice, sir, you will encourage her to do so as soon as possible.’ Rampton dabbed his lips with his napkin. ‘Though it’s an expensive business, of course. Marriage, I mean. However one looks at it.’ He applied himself to a dish of lamb cutlets.

  Savill sensed something unsaid here; he caught the ghost of its absence. ‘Is this your main residence now, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Alas, no – I am much at Westminster. I must own I wish it were otherwise. I find I have a taste for country life. Of course this is little more than a cottage, and there’s barely fifty acres with it. But it’s enough for my simple wants. I’m building a wing to accommodate my library with bedrooms above, with a fine prospect over the garden. In the spring, I shall improve the prospect still further by sweeping away those old hedgerows and farm buildings to the west of the drive. Then it will be perfection.’

  If this is a cottage, Savill thought, then I am a unicorn. The house had been refurbished since he had last been here. It now sat in grounds that were in the process of being newly laid out; on the east side of the drive, a great expanse of grass swept towards a small lake that had not been there before. As for the house, the new wing would increase its volume almost by half as much again. The work was nearly finished. Earlier in the day, carpenters had been fitting the French windows that would open from the library to the terrace.

  ‘Will you retire here, sir?’

  ‘Retire?’ Rampton smiled. ‘I doubt my masters would permit me to do that, not while this crisis continues in France. And God knows how long that will last. I tell you frankly, sir, I see no sign of its ending.’

  ‘You do not think that the King and the National Convention will come to an accommodation?’

  Rampton’s smile did not waver. ‘That is for wiser heads than yours or mine to decide.’ He turned the subject smoothly. ‘But when I do retire, it will be delightful to be here.’

  ‘Will you not find it sadly dull?’

  ‘Not in the slightest. I shall have my books, of course, and I have a mind to turn farmer.’ Rampton crooked his finger at the servant who sprang from the shadows to refill Savill’s glass. ‘I have bought two or three tenanted farms nearby. I may take them into my own hands. A toast, sir – to your Elizabeth. May she find herself a husband that suits you both.’

  Savill drank. He had once been a civil servant, and in those days he had known Mr Rampton’s ways as a dog knows his master’s. Rampton had not been talking idly during the meal. He had been making sure that Savill understood him.

  ‘I am rich,’ he was saying, ‘and I have the ear of powerful men, so you would be wise to oblige me. For your daughter’s sake as well as your own.’

  With unnatural reverence, the servants removed the cloth and set out the wine, the nuts and the fruit. Rampton signalled for them to withdraw. The two men were sitting side by side now.

  Savill bit down on a walnut and a stab of pain drove into his jaw. He twitched on his chair but managed to avoid crying out. He must find time to have the offending tooth pulled out. The truth was, he told himself, he was a coward where his teeth were concerned.

  ‘A toast, sir,’ Rampton said.

  Savill pushed aside his plate and took up his glass with relief. They drank His Majesty’s health. Avoiding each other’s eyes, they drank to Augusta’s memory. Then the conversation faltered.

  ‘His name is Charles,’ Rampton snapped, as if Savill had said it was something quite different. ‘He must be about ten or eleven years old. Thereabouts.’

  ‘Do you know who his father is?’

  Rampton cracked his knuckles, in the old days a sign of calculation; his clerks had mocked him for it, but only when they were safely out of his way. ‘I have not been able to ascertain that. I believe Augusta had left the Bavarian gentleman by then and was living in Rome, but my information is not exact.’

  ‘Does Charles speak English?’ Savill said.

  ‘The question had not occurred to me. I suppose, if he was born in Italy and he has spent the last few years in France …’ Rampton turned away and stared up at a portrait of himself. ‘Still,’ he went on in a quieter voice, ‘at his age it hardly signifies. The mind of a child is as porous as a sponge. It soaks up whatever you pour into it with extraordinary rapidity.’

  ‘If his father cannot be found, no doubt his mother’s friends will care for him. Where is he staying?’

  ‘The Embassy will let me know as soon as they hear.’

  ‘He’s nothing to do with me,’ Savill said, more loudly than he had intended. ‘He’s Augusta’s bastard.’

  ‘Pray moderate your voice, sir. You do not want the world to know your business.’

  ‘But it is not my business, sir. That’s my point.’

  Rampton refilled their glasses. ‘The law would say otherwise. Augusta was still your wife at the time of her death. You and she were not divorced. I understand that she did not even leave a will, which makes you her heir. The child’s paternity is not established, and probably never will be. In sum, this is one of those cases where the law and common sense point in the same direction as a man’s duty as a Christian. The boy is your responsibility.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  To Savill’s surprise, Rampton smiled. ‘I thought you would say that. And, that being the case, my dear sir, let me propose a solution.’

  ‘You may propose what you wish, sir. It is nothing to do with me.’

  Rampton leaned closer. ‘What if I take the boy myself?’

  Chapter Six

  Charles dreams of the boy called Louis.

  He, Charles, is lying on his bed and Louis is standing by the window. This is similar to what actually happened when Dr Gohlis came at dawn that morning. But, in the dream, Charles already knows Louis’s name. He also knows that Louis is alone and naked in the world.

  In the dream the light is much stronger than it was in real life. It floods over the doubly naked body of Louis. The colours glow like the stained glass in Notre Dame. Who would have thought there would be so many colours under a boy’s skin?

  Charles glances down at his own body. He discovers that, though it is daytime, he is not wearing any clothes. Nor is he lying under the bedclothes. Like Louis, he has lost most of his skin. He sees rope-like arteries, the blue filigree of veins, the slabs of muscle, the shiny white knobs of bone. He too has become doubly naked.

  He too has become beautiful.

  Louis stares out of the window. But now he turns, his head leading his body. Charles sees his ruined face. Louis smiles, though of course it is not easy to tell that he is smiling because his lips and skin are gone and so has most of his facial tissue.

  Louis holds out his right hand towards Charles. The gesture is unmistakably friendly. Charles tries to smile in return. That is, he thinks a smile, but he knows that he too lacks lips and skin so the smile may not be obvious.

  He raises his right hand. It looks webbed, like a duck’s foot or the ribbed leaf of a cabbage.

  ‘Hello, Louis,’ he says.

  Day by day, the house in the Rue du Bac empties itself of people and things. It also empties itself of its invisible contents, its rules, its habits, its regime. Charles does almost as he pleases now. He is under no restraint as long as he does not try to leave.

  The servants are slipping away, despite the guards at the gates and doors leading to the outer world. They leave their tasks half-done – a mop standing in a pail of dirty water in a corner of the grand staircase; a drawing room with only a third of the furniture covered up and the pictures and ornaments ranged along one wall on the floor with the packing materials beside them.<
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  The house is sliding into an unknown, unpredictable future, just as Charles is. He wanders from room to room, from salon to hall, from attic to cellar, frequently losing his way. The old woman who was meant to be looking after him is hardly ever there. He realizes after a while that he has not seen her for days. Perhaps she is dead.

  Time itself loses its familiar markers, the hours of the day, the days of the week. There are many clocks in this house but no one troubles to wind them now or to set their hands. So time disintegrates into a variety of smaller times: and soon there will be no time at all.

  Now that the old woman no longer brings him food, he is obliged to forage for it himself. He finds his way to the vaulted kitchens whose cellars run under the street.

  In the city outside, people are starving. Here there is more food than anyone could ever eat. There are vegetables rotting down to brown mush; joints of meat turning grey and breeding maggots; and bins of flour that feed a shifting population of insects and small animals.

  There are still people who cook and serve food, however, and their leftovers lie around the kitchens. There is water from the pump that serves the scullery tap. On one occasion he drinks a pot of cold coffee. On another he finds a bottle of wine nearly half full. The wine is golden and silky sweet. It cloys in his mouth. He drinks it all. It makes him sick and then sends him to sleep: he has a bad dream in which blood drips on him from a black sky streaked with flickering yellow; and he wakes with a headache.

  He spends hours watching the Rue du Bac through the cracks in the shutters in what used to be the steward’s room. He stares down at the hats and heads bobbing to and fro and listens to the grinding roar of wheels and the shouting. Sometimes he hears a popping sound in the distance which he thinks is musketry.

  Charles encounters the Abbé Viré. The old man wanders restlessly about the halls and stairs, his slippers shuffling like falling plaster on the marble and the stone. His cassock is stained with old food.

  In the old days, Maman would take him to the Abbé for instruction in religion and tuition in mathematics and the classical authors. When Charles was very young, he believed Father Viré to be the earthly form of God.

  All this makes the priest’s present conduct unsettling in the extreme. The Abbé does not appear to recognize Charles. He usually ignores him completely. He carries a breviary as he walks and reads from it, muttering to himself.

  Once, Father Viré comes across Charles trying to read a ten-day-old newspaper in a disused powder-closet. The old priest raises his hand and sketches a blessing over Charles’s head, murmuring the familiar words into the dusty air.

  As for the Count de Quillon, he stays in his suite of private apartments beyond the grand salon. Monsieur Fournier comes and goes. When he sees Charles, he often stops to ask how he does and whether he needs anything. Charles does not answer.

  ‘All will be well soon,’ he says one morning. ‘You’ll see.’

  But Charles knows that nothing will ever be well and that the only thing he will see is more of what he sees now. Still, it is good of Monsieur Fournier to tell kind lies.

  Sometimes they ask him the questions again – Fournier, the Count and Dr Gohlis. Always the same ones. What happened on the night your mother died? Did you see who was there? What was said?

  Say nothing. Not a word to anyone.

  One day, a wagon comes into the main courtyard, where the weeds are advancing in ragged green lines along the cracks between the flagstones. Men bring packing cases and begin to put things in them – pictures, statues, clocks and carpets. Some of the clocks are still ticking. They are nailed up alive in their coffins.

  The remaining servants, working in relays, bring trunks and valises from the attics. They fill them with books, papers and clothes. Two more wagons come down the lane at the back of the house with a guard of armed men. They are loaded with the heavier items. They go away during the night. So do more of the servants, and then the house is emptier than ever.

  As the people and the objects seep away from the Hotel de Quillon, Charles notices how shabby everything is – the damp patches on the plaster in the grand salon where the old tapestries used to hang; the cracks that snake across the ornate ceiling of the ladies’ withdrawing room; the leak in the roof of the room next to his which, one rainy night, brings down the whole ceiling.

  Charles does not like the nighttimes because sometimes he wets the bed. This often happens on the nights after they have asked him the questions.

  When he wets the bed, he is beaten the following morning. He understands this. He has done wrong. Since the old woman disappeared, no one notices if he wets the bed so it no longer matters.

  One night, Dr Gohlis comes into Charles’s room and wakes him from a deep sleep. He squeezes the boy’s chin between finger and thumb. He holds the candle so Charles can see his face, orange and gold in the light of the flame.

  ‘Remember my écorché boy?’ he says. ‘Are you going to be like him one day?’

  Charles knows that the écorché boy is called Louis. He is kept in the sitting room that has been set aside for the doctor’s use at the Hotel de Quillon. The door is locked when the doctor is not there.

  One morning, Charles watches the doctor leave. He sees him hide the key on the ledge of the lintel above the door. Now Charles can visit Louis.

  Often he chooses the very early morning when few people are stirring and the doctor is unlikely to be there. The écorché boy stands beside the doctor’s desk. Charles examines him carefully and presses his own body to see if he is the same underneath, under all that skin. He thinks of conversations they might have and games they might play. He likes to touch Louis and wishes that Louis could touch him. Once he kisses Louis’s cheek and he has the impression that Louis’s face is slightly wet, as if he has been crying.

  One day the key is not on the lintel. The door is locked. Dr Gohlis is not there.

  Who is left? Charles thinks there are perhaps half a dozen servants, the old abbé and himself. He cannot remember when he last saw the Count or Monsieur Fournier or Louis.

  What will happen to me, Charles wonders. Will they leave me quite alone?

  Then comes the night when everything changes. Just before dawn, Dr Gohlis wakes Charles, makes him dress and takes him downstairs. An old servant waits with two small valises in the hall.

  Charles wants to say: ‘Where are we going?’ He also wants to ask Dr Gohlis what has happened to Louis.

  But of course he cannot speak. He must not speak.

  Not a word to anyone.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Mr Savill – may I make known Mr Malbourne, my clerk?’ Rampton said, enunciating the words with precision because he was wearing a set of ivory teeth. ‘Mr Malbourne – Mr Savill.’

  They bowed to each other. Malbourne was a slender man with delicate, well-formed features and the address of a gentleman. Savill had found him and Rampton at work in the study when he arrived. The clerk’s right arm was in a black-silk sling, though he removed it when it was necessary for him to write.

  This was Savill’s second visit to Vardells, nearly a month after his first, prompted by a letter from Rampton. It was late September now, and the leaves were turning on the lime trees beside the drive.

  ‘Mr Malbourne has intelligence that relates to Mrs Savill’s son,’ Rampton said. ‘It appears that Charles has been brought to England.’ He gestured to his clerk that he should continue.

  ‘Charles is living in the country with a party of newly arrived émigrés,’ Malbourne said. ‘Fleeing the massacres. There has been quite a flood of them.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘They have taken a house in Somersetshire a few miles beyond Bath. Charnwood Court in the village of Norbury. The émigrés are people of some position in the world. Have you heard of the Count de Quillon?’

  ‘The late minister?’

  ‘Precisely. Though he held the seals of office for no more than three or four weeks before he was force
d to resign.’

  ‘He was the old king’s godson,’ Rampton said. ‘Some say it was a nearer connection still, through his mother, and that was why he was in such favour at Versailles when he was a young man. This king made him a Chevalier of St Louis. Not that it stopped him from dabbling with the Revolution when it suited his purpose.’

  ‘The point is, sir,’ Malbourne went on, ‘Monsieur de Quillon is altogether the grand gentleman. He is not an easy man to deal with. He is accustomed to having his own way, to moving in the great world.’

  ‘Then why has he buried himself in the country?’ Savill asked.

  ‘Because his resources are limited,’ Malbourne said. ‘Most of his fortune is in France, and it has been seized. His estates have been sequestered. Also he and his allies have not many friends in London. After all, they are dangerous revolutionaries themselves: they tried to manipulate their king to their own advantage.’

  ‘Their chickens have come home to roost,’ Rampton observed.

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ Malbourne continued. ‘Moreover, they are detested by those of their fellow countrymen already in London, who have never wavered from their old allegiance to King Louis and never compromised their principles.’

  ‘Very true,’ Rampton said. ‘And, to speak plainly, my dear Savill, the Count and his friends have such a history of fomenting sedition, of flirting with the mob, that we ourselves have little desire to play host to them.’

  ‘Yet you let them come here.’

  ‘Unfortunately we lack the legal instruments to prevent it,’ Malbourne said.

  ‘For the time being,’ Rampton said. ‘But that is neither here nor there. Tell him about Fournier.’

  ‘Fournier?’ Savill said. ‘The man who dealt with the funeral arrangements?’

  Malbourne bowed. ‘Yes, sir. He is the Count’s principal ally. Fournier preceded Monsieur de Quillon to England. Indeed, I believe Charnwood is leased to him, not the Count. He is a younger son of the Marquis de St Étienne and was the Bishop of Lodève under the old regime. But he has resigned his orders and now prefers to be known simply as Fournier.’ He smiled. ‘Citizen Fournier, no doubt.’