The Quickening Maze (10 page)

He refolded the rag and placed it back in the drawer.

He swung his arms around, pivoting his body left-right, right-left at the hips. He windmilled his arms over and over to fill them with blood, his hands feeling heavier, more useful, once he had finished.

He neatened his jacket, tugged at his sleeves. Unlike the inmates, he wore his clothes with precision, correctly fastened and at the proper angles to his body.

He picked up his heavy ring of keys and went out. He locked his door behind him.

 

Hannah sat in front of her mirror and brushed her hair. It hung in two drapes either side of a neat parting of white scalp that she thought too wide because of her hair’s regrettable fineness. She brushed down from the top, fifty times on each side, until it was glossy and fluent, and, floating, followed her brush up as she lifted it away.When she was done the light set around it an even garland of shine.

With adept quick fingers she divided it again and wove two plaits with their roots at her temples. She left them hanging there while she swept the rest back over her ears and pinned it, then rolled the length that hung down her back into a rope and pinned it to her crown.Then she looped the two plaits under her ears, pinning them behind so that her ears were framed: delicate, white, sculptural.

She regarded herself, wearing the careful expression she maintained before mirrors - her lips pressed together and lowered, her eyes looking appealingly upwards, her face devoid of movement. She turned this frozen face from side to side and looked. Good enough. Unlikely to be better. Today she would make something happen. The situation was clear: there he was; here she was. It simply needed to begin.

 

John heard the gate swing shut, its lock grinding round again, and swift footsteps behind him. He moved from the path and hid behind a wide, wet trunk. Chewing on the hunk of bread that he struggled to moisten with sufficient saliva to swallow, he saw the right-angled figure of William Stockdale set off on his way, presumably, to the mythically worse place, Leopard’s Hill Lodge. John leaned. A damp twig cracked softly under his boot. William Stockdale stopped. John ducked his head and pressed himself against the cold slime of the tree trunk. Again a fragment of the same twig split under his weight. He heard William Stockdale walk back the way he’d gone. He must have caught sight of John because there were a few quicker paces that scuffed through the leaves, then a thump on John’s shoulder. He was pulled from behind the tree, almost lifted like a cat by its loose collar of skin as Stockdale wrenched with a strong grip on John’s coat.

‘I have a key,’ John said. ‘I have a key.’

‘Then why are you hiding, you fool?’

‘Look. Look.’ John pulled the key from his pocket, dangled it in front of Stockdale on its frayed string.

‘So why are you hiding?’William Stockdale let him go and brushed at his own jacket.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I thought you were someone trying to make an escape.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Well, then. Just playing the fool.’ He patted him harshly on the cheek.

Stockdale strode away again and John bent down to pick up his bread, brushing crumbs of broken leaf and earth from it and biting. He panted and cursed, struggling to swallow.

For hours as he walked, he re-enacted the incident with much more satisfying and violent conclusions. He could have unleashed his strength. He could have given Stockdale a lick of boxer John, and that would have shown him. Repeatedly Stockdale staggered away, apologetic and impressed, feeling his face, blinking at the blood on his fingertips. John was magnanimous, feeling that as long as the blackguard had learned his lesson, they would say no more about it. Or he didn’t, and John carried on until the man lay knocked out on the ground, breathing through scarlet bubbles.

 

Alfred swirled the branches around him. His cape caught up behind him in the wind imparted the sensation almost of having wings. He pressed his steps down to the sides and his skates bore him over the ice with a fine sound of grinding stone. It broke up the thickness of his blood to move like this, to feel the sharp winterness of the day. Scribbling to himself, turning his patterns over his frozen pond, he could almost not think of Arthur, his dear, dead friend Arthur Hallam, who would not leave his thoughts.

As his revolve carried him round to the far side of the pond he was startled by a girl’s shape dark against the tarnished silver of the sky. He slowed towards her. She stood quite still, above him on the bank. ‘Good afternoon?’ he asked.

His dark eyes, wind-polished, shone in the clayish yellow of his face. ‘Good afternoon,’ Hannah said.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve come . . .’

‘You’re Allen’s daughter, aren’t you, the fair What-was-it? ’

‘. . . to pay you a visit. I’ve come to pay you a visit. In case . . .’

‘I see. Do you have a message?’

‘No. In case you are lonely.’

‘I see. You’ve come to pay me a visit.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And it is . . . ?’

‘Hannah.’

‘Hannah. Of course it is.’

Curious, he leaned forward precariously to get her face into focus. He saw her pale lips fluttering as she drew in a breath and backed ever so slightly away. ‘You’re cold,’ he said. ‘Shall we go in?’

She nodded.

‘One moment.’ He skated away to an easier point of exit. She walked around to meet him and silently offered a hand to help him out, but he didn’t see it and hobbled up onto the grass unaided.Together they walked back to the house, Tennyson teetering over the girl, who wondered why he didn’t think to unstrap his skates and walk comfortably in his boots, but said nothing. She walked beside him proudly at his careful slow pace, as though in a procession, and was only slightly distracted by the sweet-sharp human odour that came from his clothes. At the door he finally did remove his skates, bending down so that she could see the top of his head.Thick hair, actually thick hairs - a wide diameter to each hair - flowed from the crown in strong waves. A leaf fragment had somehow lodged in there. She wanted to tease it out with her fingers, but of course could not, nor could she say anything.

Tennyson opened the door and ushered her in. She entered looking hungrily at everything for signs of the remarkable life that was lived there, but found an ordinary vestibule - wallpaper, a table, a mirror. There on the antlers of the coatstand, however, hung his coats and that wide black hat. He twirled the cape from his shoulders and added it. With proper care, with gentle fingers that seemed unafraid as he touched her shoulders, he took her coat from her and draped it beside his own. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

His gentlemanly etiquette appeared variable: he now led the way, striding ahead rather than walking behind her quietly directing, and she had to hurry after. She was rewarded, though, when she followed him into a room that was most certainly inhabited by a poet. As he bent to the fire, positioning fresh logs with his hands so that afterwards he had to wipe smuts and blown ash from them onto his trouser fronts, she looked around at a gracious, intellectual disorder. The piles of books and papers, the rumpled sofa and littered desk, the short-stemmed pipes that roosted on nests of ash and spent spills on ledges all around the room, showed this to be a working room, its objects gathered without thought of their effect. The room absolutely radiated from him, now stalking about its centre, thumping cushions. It flowed from him, and visiting it without him there would have been like listening into his thoughts or hearing about him from his friends. And on the desk, in that big open ledger that looked like a butcher’s book - could that be a new poem? Certainly the lines did not cross to the far side of the page. His handwriting. The charged page vibrated in her sight. A poem lived on it. If she could walk across and read those fresh words, seen by no one besides herself and the poet who chose them, they would sing through her mind. What sentiments might they express?

‘Do take a seat,’ he said, ‘and I’ll arrange some tea.’ Having pulled the servants’ bell, he sat down on the sofa opposite the seat on which she’d perched. He stretched his long legs in front of him, crossed at the ankles, and pushed his fingers through his hair, passing tantalisingly beside but not finding the bit of vegetation she’d seen at the door.

‘So, you’re Dr Allen’s daughter,’ he repeated.

‘Yes, I am.’

The door opened. A servant entered, a woman. An old woman, white-haired, raw-handed, ruddy streaks in her face from the cold day and the kitchen fire, she looked at them quickly and curtsied.

‘Ah, Mrs Yates.’

Mrs Yates nodded her head slowly, looking across at her master and his young female guest. Hannah, shamed, stared down at her knees, plucked her skirt straight with brisk, matter-of-fact fingers, attempting an unconcerned composure. She hadn’t thought of them being seen by anyone.

‘Yes, as you see, we are entertaining this afternoon. So tea, please, and et cetera. Plenty of et cetera, if you’d be so good. Skating has sharpened the appetite.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Mrs Yates backed out of the room. Tennyson smiled at Hannah. He looked as if he were about to say something. Hannah sat with her head very erect, her neck stretched as long, as much like Annabella’s as possible, and waited. But Tennyson didn’t say anything. Instead, his gaze wandered to the fire. Fortunately Hannah had prepared some questions.

‘How are you finding the area, Mr Tennyson?’

‘Oh, very well.’ He looked back at her. ‘Pleasant enough.’

She blushed.‘Have you visited Copt Hall?’ she asked.

‘No, I can’t say that I have.’

‘I understand it is where
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
was first performed, for a wedding. It is a beautiful house in the forest. You can walk quite easily . . .’

He woke up at that, leaned forward with widened eyes. She felt that stare inside her; it buzzed against her spine. ‘So they were all here, were they? Hermia and Lysander and the others were all lost in these woods. Puck appearing on a branch. Oh, I am pleased you told me that.’

 

Her stomach empty, her body light and thin, Margaret stood in the forest and looked up at bare, spreading branches and thought of Christ’s body hanging there, hanging from its five wounds. The thorns, like those thorns over there, wound round Him in a tight crown must have infested His head with pain.And the wounds of the nails, driven into His poor, innocent body by the hammering of Sin. They held Him up. He hung from them.This thought enlarged suddenly - they were
how
He hung in the world: it was His wounds, His pain, that connected Him to the world. She felt this in herself, that at her points of contact with the world she was in pain, that her soul was pinned to the wall of her flesh, suffering, suffocating for release. She knotted her fingers tightly together, swaying in the strength of this thought. She breathed hissingly through her teeth, grateful for this illumination, and wanting more.

 

Abigail sat on the rug by the fire playing with her dolls and half-listening to her parents’ talk. The heat from the fire reddened her left cheek, made the skin feel tight, her clothes dry and crisp. If she didn’t move, it made a white light shine in a corner of her head. She knew that sitting there made the rest of the room seem dark and cold like cold water, and she liked that. Her dolls’ bead eyes gleamed in the firelight as she bowed them towards each other and made them talk. ‘No, don’t say that, Angelica . . .’

‘One consequence of course might very well be the renewal of my lecturing,’ Matthew said.

‘Might be,’ Eliza stroked the top of her husband’s head as she passed, then sat down beside him, ‘if it all succeeds in the way you imagine.’

‘If!’ he repeated. ‘If!’ Eliza could be cold towards his enthusiasms until he was proved correct.

‘Well,’ she said slowly, teasing, ‘one never can tell.’

‘Oh, yes, one can. Primo, there are several other companies out there already operating, which tells us that it is viable. Secundo, I have advantages over their schemes, which means that I will supersede them before very long. So don’t you doubt this for one instant, and be assured,’ he went on, wagging a finger, ‘that my services as a speaker will be required around the country.’

‘What scheme?’ Fulton asked, entering with a book in hand.

‘Ah, yes, my son. All shall be revealed. It may very well come to constitute a significant part of your future and fortune.’

‘Why not tell me now? Why keep me in ignorance? ’ Fulton balled his fists quietly in his pockets.

‘No, no. A little more secrecy, a chrysalis for this larva. I’ll just say this . . . it is a kind of a machine.’

‘An engine? A machine?’

Abigail, now listening, added this to her dialogue. ‘A machine to make cakes,’ she said. ‘But shh, it’s a secret.’

‘Abigail, don’t sit so close to the fire.You’ll burn to ashes,’ Eliza said, and turned back.

Abigail looked up in terror, and shuffled quickly forward on her behind.

‘Not really burn,’ Eliza reassured her.

‘It was a figure of speech,’ her father explained.

The adults smiled fondly, Fulton included, who now felt half-appeased and part of their conspiracy, whatever it was.

 

The two horses stood nose to rump beside each other with blankets over their backs, a little ice in their coarse eyelashes. They blinked with effort over their downcast, convex eyes as John passed, patting them, and headed on to the silent camp.

Men sat around the yellow fire, leaning forwards, staring into it, thick blankets across their backs also.

‘Ezekiel?’ John asked.

‘You’ve found me,’ said one figure, turning.‘Ah, John Clare. You’ve come among us again.’

‘I have.’

‘There’s little food now, I’m afraid to tell you. Are you come hungry?’