The Quickening Maze (13 page)

After long quiet, the church door opened: the warden, Mr Tripp. He crossed himself and walked into the vestry, glancing across under heavy overhanging eyebrows at the two girls apparently praying, and recognised the doctor’s daughter and the pretty one. When he was gone, they looked at each other. Hannah pointed at the door and they got up and crept away.

 

John was no longer allowed out of bounds, not even to return to work in the admiral’s garden. For that he had been replaced. His key had been taken from him. He could wander only within the grounds of Fairmead House and knew that he was being watched. It was his challenge had done it.

His few days in darkness had been a living death, but worse: without rest, without God, without ceasing.When the door was shut the room had started to sink down and down until it was deep underground, deeper than a mine. He could call upward to the surface, but no one would hear. When the door was opened again and he was freed at ground level, the coloured world had rushed howling in, into the vacuum of his starved senses. The force of it had knocked him on his arse. His head was too heavy to lift, his hands as feeble as leaves. He sat on the ground outside, feeling light hit the back of his head, the breeze swarming all over him, and stared down at the blades of grass between his thighs and one climbing ant until he could manage more. Later, he wondered if he was dreaming it all: he’d wanted the world back so much that maybe his crazed mind had made it for him and he was still underground. The clouds, the trees, the birds all moved so exactly as he knew they did.

After he’d regained himself, pieced the parts back together, he felt a terrible and righteous rage and John shuddered and faded and flinched while Jack Randall again took charge.The doctor he would never forgive, and there was no one from whom he would not seek redress. To proclaim this, he’d issued a challenge.

That was a while ago. He was mostly John again now, but still he couldn’t go anywhere. He looked up at slow, steep-sided clouds. He held a fine twig at the end of a branch and looked at its tight triangular buds like an infant’s tiny fingernails. He heard a woodpecker drumming out in the forest and felt distance tug at him. He pulled on the branch and let go so that it whipped up and bounced.

John walked to a bench.When he sat he saw that he held the Bible in his left hand and remembered why. He pulled out a loose paper from his pocket and spread it beside him to continue his work.The large, final words were calming to write.They resounded.They were heard.

 

Weep Daughters Of Israel Weep Over Saul

Who Cloathed You In Scarlet More Fair To Behold . . .

 

 

There were feathers in the clearing, three of them, connected at their shafts, a scrap of torn wing. They stood on one edge, shuddering like the sail of a toy boat in the breeze. Around them the dark leaves and frail flowers of bluebells that glowed here and there where the sun struck through.

Margaret sat and heard the wind pouring in the leaves overhead. She had fallen in the river once, as a child, and heard the rushing deafness of drowning. But she had been saved. The flowing of the air around her seemed to intensify, to grow louder, until it was so powerful it reversed her breath. It almost lifted her from the ground.

The wind separated into thumps, into wing beats. An angel. An angel there in front of her.Tears fell like petals from her face. It stopped in front of her. Settling, its wings made a chittering sound. It paced back and forth, a strange, soft, curving walk that was almost like dancing. It reached out with its beautiful hands to steady itself in the mortal world, touching leaves, touching branches, and left stains of brightness where it touched. Slowly, unbearably, it turned its face to look at her. When it spoke, she felt that the words were spoken precisely in the middle of her mind, but that they somehow pervaded the whole forest. The leaves crisped and trembled. ‘Do not weep,’ it said. ‘I am an angel of the Lord.’

‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Forgive me. Forgive my husband.’

Inclining its head towards her, it smiled. ‘There are things I must reveal to you.’

Margaret dared to look at it, hearing its voice quiet and full of love, and saw that angels’ faces are subtler machines than human ones. There were parts that worked sideways as well as up and down. It registered the finest changes, momentary and delicate, as it moved, like the iridescence on a pigeon’s neck.

‘Is He . . . Is He coming?’ she asked.

‘Do not,’ the angel told her, ‘ask to see Him. His Love is a flood. His glory is a fire. You could not withstand it. And we have need of you. Hold out your hand.’

Margaret did as she was instructed. The angel dropped onto her palm something small and round, about the size of a hazelnut picked up from the ground. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘It is all that is made.’

Margaret looked at it, marvelling at its minuteness, its delicacy. It had rivers narrower than a leaf ’s veins that pulsed, seas that ticked back and forth, and around it was the brightness of its own sky, then other skies, then darkness.

‘Only because God loves it,’ the angel instructed, ‘can it exist. Without His love . . .’

‘It vanishes.’

‘Vanishes. Vanishes. Vanishes.’

The angel removed it from her hand. Looking up, Margaret saw how the trees stretched their arms behind the angel, to protect it.

‘Here now is your first instruction.’

‘I submit. Utterly, I submit.’

‘Your name is no longer Margaret. That was the name given you by your earthly parents, used by your husband. Today you are rechristened.’

‘Rechristened.’ At that word all the leaves and trees were still, expectant, formal. She waited, not breathing for long heartbeats.

‘Your name is Mary.’

‘It is too much.’ Margaret covered her face with her hands.

‘It is His Word.’

‘Mary,’ Margaret whispered.

‘Mary.’

‘Mary,’ Mary answered.

‘Mary, you must bear witness. You have a task.’

‘I cannot bear it. I am excrement, a husk.’

‘It is His will. He has called you worthy.’

‘I submit utterly.’

‘Then you know what you must do.’

‘What I must do?’

‘Drive them out.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

‘Now I will dance for you and shortly I will be gone. You will be left with your task.’

Mary sat and watched the angel dance. As it turned and twisted with joy, it touched the world, leaving brightness. Soon it was surrounded by the marks it made and danced in a wheel of obliterating light.

 

Hannah walked and recited the remarkable facts to herself - a poet, tall, handsome, strong, dark - and out of her thoughts he appeared. Under the bell of her skirt she stumbled, seeing him, but continued forwards, calm, preparing her smile.What would happen? In her mind, the apex of their next encounter was, outrageously, a kiss, his large arms around her and the fierce kiss kindling where their lips touched. He craned his head forward to identify the approaching girl, then lifted his wide hat.

‘Miss Allen, is it not? I recognise the form.’

‘Do you? It is. That is to say, I am. Good morning.’

He approached near enough to see her clearly and talk without effort of his voice. Hannah caught the sharp reek of his body as he did so.

‘You’re carrying a book,’ he told her.

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘And what book is it, if I may ask?’

‘Certainly you may. It’s . . .’ she lifted it and read the spine as though she had forgotten. ‘It’s Dryden, Dryden’s poems.’

‘You don’t find him too dry, then?’ He laughed at his own joke, appealing to her to do so also. She tried to and did, perhaps a little vehemently, to reward his friendly intent.

‘And may I ask,’ she said into the amicable silence,

‘what you are reading at present?’

‘You may, you may. Also poems, though with less pleasure, I imagine. My own. I’m preparing a volume.’

‘Oh, that’s wonderful.’

‘Is it? I don’t expect the critics will agree with you. If I ever publish it, I expect they will treat it no more kindly than my previous efforts.’

‘Critics, they’re . . .’ She had no strong idea of what they were, so raised her arms disparagingly. ‘They’re critics. They aren’t poets. And I certainly look forward to reading it. Perhaps you might inscribe a copy for me. It’s very exciting to have a poet here, aside from Mr Clare, that is.’

‘Mr Clare?’

‘John Clare. He’s a patient of my father’s.’

‘John Clare, the peasant poet? I see. That’s . . .’ Tennyson frowned. As he did so a small cloud slid away from the face of the sun. Colours deepened. The little pebbles glinted in the path. A breeze lifted the branches.

‘That’s better,’ Hannah said.

‘Hmm. I can do that, you know. Would you like to see?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Stand still and watch.’

Tennyson approached even closer so that Hannah was inside his sharp smell. Was this it? What was he about to do - kiss her? Hannah stood absolutely still and closed her eyes also to receive the pressure of his lips. But it didn’t come. She opened her eyes again to see Tennyson with his eyes and mouth firmly closed, pursed shut. So he hadn’t seen her close her eyes.That horror of humiliation had not happened. She breathed deeply.Tennyson stayed as he was for a moment.Then, very gradually, he relaxed the muscles of his face until it was as expressionless as a death mask. He continued the outward movement, slowly opening his eyes and mouth, and opening them more, until his eyes were startlingly wide open and he smiled broadly with his eyebrows raised.

Suddenly, as though a fit had ended, his face dropped back to normal. ‘There it is,’ he said. ‘The sun coming out from behind a cloud.’

‘It’s . . . remarkable,’ Hannah said. She wasn’t sure what it meant to be chosen to see this performance. Was he being avuncular, treating her as a child? Had it not occurred to him at all that she might presume he was about to kiss her?

‘It’s a party piece,’ he explained. ‘I used to do it for my friends at Cambridge.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Yes. Arthur Hallam. Well, he . . . I shouldn’t detain you.’

‘That’s quite all right.’

‘No, no. I should be getting back. Good day to you.’

‘Good day.’

Tennyson tipped his hat and walked back into the murk of thought about his dead friend. Hannah watched him go, his long legs loosely hinged at the knees. Things she might have said clamoured within her. Nevertheless, they had just met alone and talked, and he had smiled and entertained her.There was good reason to hope.

A quickening in the leaves. Bright clouds. People working in the garden.

Mary stood in the rush of the day and watched them. How they suffered as they went about their tasks, muttering to themselves or instructing the air, laughing at nothing, shaking their arms, twitching, rocking back and forth, closing their eyes suddenly and holding still like a child awaiting a blow, like a wife awaiting her husband’s fist. They were attacked, all of them; devils attacked them. Her truth would exorcise them. But it seemed that Simon was safe. She watched Simon, so large and soft with his big white hands. His coat was pulled smooth as a horse’s hide across the breadth of his shoulders. His curly hair shivered in the breeze. He was not the first person she had to give the news. Somehow, in his idiocy, he knew. He was kind and frightened, and magnified the kindness in others, shamed their cruelty. More was not required of him. Look how he tended the vegetable patch with his watering can. The thick leaves purred and bounced under sparkling strings of water.

The pure water. Drops scattering. Seeds of light falling in the grass, on the earth. She made light, also. She must have caught it from the angel. Her fingertips left stains of golden brightness that she struggled always to leave in threes or multiples of three. She had to speak. She couldn’t keep it in. As though her mouth were full of water. But to whom?

There was Clara, a witch, a friend of the devils. But not Clara. Not yet.

William Stockdale approached on his rounds. In his hand he carried a stained cloth and so she knew that he was the one she must try first. She could not see whether the stain was blood, but it was certainly ruddy, dark, human. He was Roman, a crucifier. He held the people in torment. She stepped into his path, held up her hands and he came towards her, not knowing that he had no choice but to come to her. He didn’t see the shining tunnels in which people walked when they moved according to His Will. No matter. She stood still and he was brought to her.

‘The Lord is love,’ she began.

‘Indeed,’ he said, not stopping.

‘He is love,’ she repeated, stepping again into his path, halting him. ‘And He is everywhere.’

‘That’s nice for him.’

‘And returning. He will return and He will judge.’ She tried to stare piercingly up into his eyes, but the sun burned behind the man’s head. She addressed his waistcoat buttons. ‘You must shrive. Your soul is in danger. You can hold nothing back. All is seen.’

‘I’ve seen plenty myself, and if you don’t mind I’ve work to do.’

‘Take heed. Hearken unto me. I bear an angelic message.’

‘I’m grateful for the warning. Now if you’ll let me . . .’ He stretched out his left arm, placed it past her shoulder and tried to sweep her aside, but she gripped him, swung round like a door. She must see the change in him. The word must reach him.