The Quickening Maze (17 page)

 

‘Pssst!’

Eliza looked up from her household accounts.‘How may I help you?’

‘Shh!’ Matthew pressed a finger to his lips, then beckoned with a curling finger to follow him through the doorway.

Eliza blew on the inked page and went after him, found him loitering half-way round the corner of the vestibule.When he saw her, he moved on. She laughed, bustled after.

‘Where are you leading me?’ she called.

He crouched out of sight. When she rounded the corner, he stood up, pirouetted, and beckoned her on.

‘Fool.’ She followed him, laughing as he danced away.

The house was empty, with all the wedding guests gone. He led her all around it until she was panting, then finally stopped by his study door. ‘If you would care to follow me.’ He smiled. His whiskers looked mischievous.

‘Gladly,’ she breathed.

He opened the door for her and in she went. She saw immediately what he’d been leading her towards.

‘What is it?’

‘Aha,’ he said. ‘What is it indeed?’

Eliza looked at the box on the floor. ‘I thought it was one of the wedding gifts when it arrived.’

‘In which case you were wrong. Isn’t it beautiful?’

It stood on his desk, a brass machine with three curving feet, a stem, a barrel with a handle and many radial arms that branched up at right angles with finer stems surmounted with globes of different colours, some of them surrounded by a corolla of tiny globes on separate stems.

‘It is called an orrery.’

‘Heavenly bodies?’ she asked.

‘Of course. The sun there in the centre.’

‘It’s beautiful. Was it very expensive?’

‘What a vulgar question. Come here, my dear, and turn this handle.’

‘I won’t break it?’

‘Fear not. The heavens are at your command.’

He stood behind her and held her waist, warmed by the chase through the house. Eliza took the handle and turned. The mechanism was beautifully, gelatinously smooth. From left to right the worlds revolved with their moons waltzing around them while the large brass ball of the sun stood unmoved, adored, reflecting the lamplight.

‘What is the one with all those moons?’

‘Jupiter.’

‘Aren’t you clever?’

‘Terrifically. Prodigiously.’ Matthew kissed her neck.

 

The day was light and taut. A breeze hissed against the trees. High white cloud was dragged across the blue. She could smell the burnt dust of the path.There had been no reprisals, not yet, for her sin, no claws pouncing into her, no shame. She was in accordance with His will. There was yet work to do. The exorcism was reaching its climax. She closed her eyes and prayed.

A voice said, ‘Too frightened to look, is it?’

Mary opened her eyes and saw the one who she had been waiting for, Clara, the witch. Mary thanked God for sending her. ‘I have no fear of anything.You are the one who fears. Everywhere you see . . .’

Clara giggled.‘You are a liar,’ she said.‘I can do things to you.’

‘No, you cannot. I am invulnerable because . . .’

‘Yes, I can.Terrible things.You couldn’t invent them.’

‘I’m alone in a madhouse. I’ve nothing but His protection. What can you do? You have . . .’

‘You think this is the worst? You think this is the worst there is?’

‘I know there’s worse. I’ve known it. Most of us have. I’ve spent hours . . .’

‘But being Jew-Jesus’s whore, you’re preserved.’ Clara giggled again.

‘God loves you too. It is limitless. It is larger than this world. This world is so tiny . . .’

‘I’d piss on it.’

‘It’s there. Even after you’ve pissed on it, it will be full of kindness, radiant . . .’

‘Why don’t you show me? Why don’t you come with me? There’s something I want to show you. If you can stand it.’

‘There’s nothing you can show me . . .’

‘Then come and look at it. Come on.’

Clara started walking away, her hair twitching over her shoulder. Mary paused only for a fraction of a moment, then followed. Death could take nothing of value from her, so what could Clara do?

Simon trotted over to Clara to ask her where she was going. He grabbed hold of her shoulder. She dived away out of his grasp and turned on him.

‘But where don’t you . . .’ he began.

‘We’re going to the place,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t come.’

‘No . . .’ he lowed.

‘You cannot come.’

Simon knew not to try to disobey her. He put a finger in his mouth and stood back.

Clara led Mary to the gate. Peter Wilkins awakened from his seat, pushed his hat back on his head and unlocked the gate for them.

They immediately left the path. Clara stepped over brambles, the broken light flickering over her. Things flew. The forest made its little eating sounds.

‘A little further,’ Clara said.

A clearing of scraped earth. There was something on it.

‘Here. Now look upon it.’

‘You dwell in darkness and there is no need. Light is abundant. It searches out every part of you. It loves you.’

‘Shut your holy, stinking mouth. This is my place you’re in. Look upon it.’

‘What is it?’

‘It has powers.’

‘It has none. It has no connection . . .’

‘Shut your mouth and look upon it.’

Mary stepped forward and looked down. It had the form of a circle and was about the size of a large plate. It was beautifully made from tiny pieces. At its edge was a fence of small sticks. It had a spiralling, repetitive pattern made with feathers, remarkably matching stones, berries, insects’ shiny wings, nuts, leaves. At its centre was the swirl of a snail shell. Mary looked up at Clara who was smiling, muttering, apparently waiting for something to happen to Mary, for her to be distressed, changed in some way. Again Mary looked at it and felt her gaze absorbed. She found it pitiable, with that safe house of a shell, that dream of home, at its centre. Intricate and powerless.

‘Now that you’ve seen it,’ Clara told her,‘the demon will have entered you.’

‘No demon can enter me. An angel told me so.’

‘What you invent is your own affair. Wait now and see.’

Mary shook her head. She felt nothing. Perhaps the exorcism had already been achieved. Clara was mistress of no devils. To be sure, though, Mary set her foot on the shape and dragged it across. Clara ran and knocked Mary onto her back and tore at her. Mary, in a moment of dreadful, unchristian weak-mindedness, put up her hands to defend herself. It pleased her then to have those hands bitten and stamped on. Clara spat finally on her and ran away. Mary felt burning trenches in her face. The trees swayed peacefully over. She stood up and cool blood poured down along her chin. She caught drops in both hands. She stood and held her hands out until they were bathed. She pressed her hands to her face, printing them scarlet, and walked triumphantly back to the madhouse.

There she met William Stockdale, who took a relishing look at her and said, ‘Oh dear, oh dear. I think the doctor will have to see about this. Time, I’m thinking, you spent some time at my pleasure in the Lodge.’

‘Listen, listen, we’ll make a penny or two, what? Old days, nothing. I know the public’s taste as well as I ever did.’

He stared at him, stared into him, but he could see in John’s eyes that it wasn’t John looking out, or was only for fractions of moments, when he would sense himself seen and look quickly away. John was speaking very rapidly. In the middle of his fattened face, his mouth was dry and muscular, his breath unclean.

 

‘There’s a Doctor Bottle imp who deals in urine

A keeper of state prisons for the queen

As great a man as is the Doge of Turin

And save in London is but seldom seen

Ylcep’d old Allen - mad brained ladies curing

Some poxed like Flora and but seldom clean

The new road o’er the forest is the right one

To see red hell and further on the white one.’

 

He wanted to be out of that cell. It was a nightmare, simply a nightmare - his old friend mad and gabbling and laughing as he read from a greasy notebook. It was like a possession. And the air was rank. And there were noises from other chambers.

‘Earth hells or bugger shops or what you please

Where men close prisoners are and women ravished

I’ve often seen such dirty sights as these

I’ve often seen good money spent and lavished

To keep bad houses up for doctors fees

And I have known a bugger’s tally traversed

Till all his good intents begin to falter

John Taylor walked back from Leopard’s Hill Lodge with Eliza Allen under the fragmenting trees. Thin puddles split beneath their feet. Leaves flowed down around them.

‘A sibyl’s prophecies,’ he said. He was upset by what he’d seen, by the dwindling lives of his friends. This classical thought now set a seal on his mood and slightly assuaged him.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘A sibyl, a prophetess,’ he explained. ‘She would write her prophecies on leaves and let the wind scatter them, read them who can. I spend my time now in ancient studies, mostly Egyptian, the pyramids and so forth.’

‘I see.You should tell my husband. I’m sure he would be interested. But how did you find Mr Clare?’ she asked.

‘Not well,’ he answered. ‘He was . . . agitated. He kept asking after his childhood sweetheart, Mary. I hadn’t the heart to tell him that she has died. Also - it would be amusing if it weren’t the index of quite appalling suffering - he seemed at times to be under the impression that he is Lord Nelson.’

‘Oh. Sometimes it is Byron, I am told.’

‘That makes more sense. He’s is rewriting one of Byron’s poems. He also spoke very violently, obscenely in fact, against the place and your husband, whom he says he hardly sees at the moment. He showed me part of the poem “Don Juan”, where these sentiments were also expressed. How long has he been in there, rather than Fairmead House?’

‘I’m not exactly sure. More than a month. Many patients do spend time there when it is necessary and return later. And as to my husband, John Clare can hardly have seen him, he is so busy with the wood manufactury.’

‘You didn’t know him in his pride, I suppose. You can only have seen him distraught.’

‘I am used to seeing people distraught.’

‘But you should have seen him as I knew him.’

‘His intelligence is still evident.’

‘Intelligence I’m not so sure about. I mean, no doubt he has a good deal and he was always very astute about people. But the height of his powers, his inspiration - it was something to behold. He lacked rhetoric. He lacked shape and used many unfamiliar words of his own dialect. But the living earth, the world he knew . . . if you will permit me an extravagant formulation, it sang itself through him. England sang through him, its eternal, living nature. Thousands and thousands of lines, and all of it fresh, seen, melodic, real. It was genius, absolutely. How can that power be destroyed, he asks, knowing there is no answer. Excuse me, I simply wanted to think of him then for a moment.You said, didn’t you, something about your husband’s manufactury?’

‘Yes, the carving machine.’

‘Oh, of course. The Pyroglyph. A fine Greek name a sibyl would have liked: the fire mark. He wrote to me on the matter. Unfortunately, I’m in no position to invest at the moment. So, he’s all taken up with that, is he?’

‘Yes. In his headlong fashion. Not to say that he is neglecting the asylum.’

‘And how are you, Mrs Allen? It has been such a long time since I saw you last.’

John Taylor had a certain dry charm, Eliza remembered, appropriate to a literary man, a bachelor, and a scholar. She associated genteel, well-kept rooms with him. In their clean silence she imagined she’d hear only the scratching of a pen or the eager, quiet sound of pages being cut.

‘Not since you brought John.’

‘No, longer, my dear. I saw only your husband then. And your son. Is that correct? No, it was when I published your husband’s book. Some years.’

Eliza smiled. John Taylor regarded her face, softly ageing, handsome in the flaring autumn light.

‘And are you well?’ he enquired.

‘I am. We prosper, I suppose. We are all in health. Dora is now married and lives not too far away.There is the wood carving.’

‘Your husband isn’t neglecting you for it?’

‘No, no. We both have much to do, I suppose. You must come now and see him.’

‘Indeed, I must. I have to settle John’s expenses.’

‘We have guests you might like to meet. Perhaps you have already. Do you know the poet Alfred Tennyson?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not much concerned with poetry any more, but I have heard of him. He’s here, is he? I’m afraid the reviews have chewed him about a bit. They’ve grown no kinder since my poor Keats suffered them. I hope he hasn’t been crushed. He’s a patient?’

‘No, no. His brother is. A melancholic. In fact, the family are here visiting; they comprise the party. No, Alfred is heavy for spells, I understand, but not deranged.’

They turned off the path and towards Fairmead House. They found the party at tea. Matthew Allen was standing, a cup in his hand, holding forth to a party all younger than himself, mostly women, two of whom were examining a piece of wood. He broke off when he saw the publisher, greeting him with his eyes while he finished the sentence.

‘Mr Taylor, what a pleasure. Do take a seat. Fulton.’

Fulton obediently stood to offer his own seat.

‘Oh, no. I’m afraid I can’t stay. So you’re Fulton. You have grown.’

‘Thank you,’ Fulton said and looked down, embarrassed at the stupidity of his answer.