The Quickening Maze (22 page)

His friends were elsewhere. Septimus was in the doctor’s madhouse. His brother Edward was in another. His father was dead. Arthur Hallam, his friend, was dead and had taken out of the world with him energy, air, life. The greatest mind Alfred had known: widely commanding, clear and quick, inventive, adult, poetic. Arthur had loved Alfred’s poetry, had defended it in print, he had loved Alfred and he was dead. He would have married Alfred’s sister, would have become the best element in his family, but he had died and left Alfred alone.

Images of Arthur came and went, but no words came. Words would come, he might have known that, but presently they did not. He was dumb and alone. He lacked the energy even to read other people’s words or get up from his chair. He stared at the fire. He was alone.

 

Dr Matthew Allen sat at his desk with a cup of coffee and a pen in his hand. He had a new ledger open in front of him and carefully entered invented numbers that would appease his investors.At moments he looked down at his solidified lies and it made his scalp tighten, but he reminded himself of their honourable and logical purpose.When dealing with the mad a virtuous dishonesty is sometimes required. So with his investors: he would mislead them to ultimate rewards. His heart beat light and fast with the pleasure of his own cleverness.

Still, the need for actual money remained. Fortunately he had thought of somebody to ask before the last resort of writing to his brother Oswald. Humming to himself, he got up, smoothed down his beard and set off for their room.

He knocked softly and heard nothing. He opened the door and entered. Septimus, fully clothed, lay curled on his bed, his knees up to his chest, his hands hugging his knees.‘Good morning,’ said Matthew.‘Just the man.’

 

Lord Byron awoke with a fearsome headache, in soiled garments. He knew he only had himself to blame, but without such dissipations how could he disperse his animal spirits and find rest? The pages he had written! There had been weeks of thousands of lines, his hand scurrying across the page hurrying to set them down, his lip fluttering, his head a butter churn of beating poetry. His family would be snoring before he fell asleep and he would awaken when the stars were just beginning to sink into dawn’s flood of light and the first people were trudging out to the fields, his lips already moving with lines he had to set down. Poems had formed in his dreams, had become louder and clearer until they had formed a solid bridge into wakefulness. They would force him awake to serve them. Sometimes he would creep out of bed into his corner chair, find an unused scrap of paper and start scratching them down before he realised that he’d written them already. Weeks of this frenzy. No wonder John Barleycorn was called upon to loosen the grip of words, to set him back on his arse and out of the violent machine of poetry.

But it had been better with his friends, a companionable riot through London’s streets. They would hate to see him now, alone in his room, hungry, abandoned, in a soiled shirt and excremental undergarments. And in flashes, with sudden clenches of shame, images of the past night’s debauch recurred to him. Had there really been again such ungentlemanly fighting? And fornication? He remembered shrieks and heard more of them from other parts of his house.

His servant opened the door. ‘Time for your exercise, ’ he said.

Byron looked at him, remembering. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly and stood, still staring at the man. His servant’s face changed as he stared, or rather, stayed the same, became the same. Around that face the air seemed to be splitting, dragging back. It was excruciating to watch. The face pushed into a new element, as though through water, until it was absolutely there, in the room with him. Finally, Byron recognised the man.

‘I know who you are.’

‘I know who you are.’

‘I know what you do.’

‘Do you, now?’

Behind the man, his double, himself, face glossy with sweat, buttoning his trousers, merging into the back of himself.

‘You’re Stockdale.’

‘And who are you?’

‘Lord Byron. I know what you do.’

‘You don’t know anything, your lordship.’

‘You did it again last night.’

‘Your lordship is mistaken. You’ve been locked up these past three days.’

‘Three nights ago, then. You violated . . .’

‘Come, come. Don’t be foolish.’

‘Give me my liberty and I won’t tell.’

‘Your freedom is for the doctor to decide. And anyway, who would believe you?’

‘The doctor.’

‘Which doctor?’

‘Dr Allen. He is a friend of mine.’

‘Put you in here, though, didn’t he? Your friend.You see, you are mad.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Don’t think . . .’ Byron held his head.

‘Who are you?’

‘Ow.’

He had to, he had to pull himself back inside himself. Stockdale had hold of his shirt, was shaking him. He clenched his teeth. Inside his skull, a crushing, a drowning. He forced himself further. He had to. It was an exchange of pains and he had to accept the greater. Stockdale shook him. John felt his flesh come off in the attendant’s hands leaving his bones bare, like a dead beast’s bones tacky with remnant flesh where the wind and sun had burned. Only his head remained the same. He heard the knocking of dogs’ jaws busy around his entrails that hung and fell into a pit. Stockdale dropped him. When he landed he saw himself briefly on a road, fleshless, exposed, a dead rabbit. He heard the clatter of carts and voices. Alone. The road stretched for miles in each direction. The wind softly blew on him. He’d woken up so far from home. He knew who he was.

‘I’m John,’ he said.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m John Clare. I’m John. I’m a celebrated poet. When the doctor makes his rounds I will tell him what you did, unless you tell him to release me, that I am better.’

‘You don’t know who you are. Shakespeare, is it? Nelson? Who are you?’

‘You know who I am. You will tell him to release me. And her. You let her go, too.’

‘Who?’

‘Mary?’

‘Mary? There is no Mary here.’

‘Not Mary. You know who. You know.’

 

Winter was ending in a long ceremony of rain, rain with hardly any wind beyond the drifting cold breath of its downrush.Vertical and loud, it flattened the grass and shone in all the trees.

Dr Allen stepped out into it, raising his umbrella. He was late and hungry. He hadn’t eaten that morning. He hadn’t dared, what with the pain in his stomach and the lightest of meals causing violent expulsions. He lacked regularity. He lacked sleep. He lacked money.

A figure on the path, also under an umbrella.

‘Dr Allen,’ he shouted over the noise of the rain.

‘Yes.’ Dr Allen squinted at him, holding his collar.

‘You are Dr Allen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’re the devil I want,’ he shouted.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Yes, you will.’

‘I’m sorry, are you a patient?’

‘How dare you!’

The rain drummed on the man’s umbrella, formed a falling fringe of drops in front of his glaring red face. Dr Allen suffered a sudden lurch of panic: the man was a creditor.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘Please, come inside. We can’t talk like this out in the rain. I can hardly hear you.’

‘It takes you this long to invite me inside. Lead on, doctor, lead on.’

Whoever he was followed Matthew Allen into the vestibule, furled his umbrella and speared it into the stand.

‘I knew,’ he began, ‘that you ran a lax establishment, but I thought that at least you would know who was and was not a patient of yours.’

‘Many apologies for the confusion. Sincerely. If you would please follow me to my study. There we can talk.’

Allen set off swiftly towards his study, wanting to conceal whatever would follow, to bottle it. He opened the door and the man strode past him - past, frighteningly, the two sets of accounts laid side by side, but at which he did not glance.

‘What’s that?’ the man asked, pointing.

‘Oh, that. That’s an orrery. It’s the planets.’

‘Yes, yes. I know what it is. I’d forgotten the name.’

‘If I may explain,’ Allen said. ‘There have been difficulties, as I’ve acknowledged, of a mechanical nature, but as I have tried to make clear, the machine is now functioning perfectly . . .’

‘Machine? What are you talking about?’

‘The Pyroglyph. Excuse me, sir, you are . . .’

‘Excuse me, “your lordship” is the appropriate form of address for a viscount.’

‘For a viscount?’

‘Indeed. A viscount.’

Allen began to wonder if this were not, in fact, a patient, one of the new ones his wife had been dealing with. ‘I beg your pardon . . .’

‘So you will when I’ve finished with you. Do you really have no idea what is going on?’

‘I’m sorry. I’m a little unwell. The machine, the manufacture, the accounts take up a great deal of energy.’

‘Will you stop talking about your bloody machine.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t understand. Don’t know. My son is a patient, so to speak. Charles Seymour. His name is familiar, at least?’

‘Oh. Oh. Of course. I do beg your pardon, your lordship.’

‘As predicted. Would you summon him for me?’

‘If you so wish.’

‘I do wish it. I wish it very much, very much. But it can’t be done.You can’t do it. And once again I am appalled that you don’t know that you can’t.You can’t because he is not here. He has done exactly what I have been paying you to avoid. He has run off with that atrocious little whore.’

Morning.The door open. Stepping out into light, into the world carefully, one step at a time so as not to fall. Inhaling her small requirement of the boundless air. Leaves on the trees, green growth in the vegetable garden where the people quietly worked. Nothing came at her, nothing attacked. There were flowers and clouds. The day was gentle.

Forgiveness.This was what forgiveness felt like - given back to the world, freed into it, whole and restored. Without words her being resonated thanks as she stood there, closing her eyes slowly in the breeze and opening them again to see the Creation, the play of the infant Christ’s spirit in the subtle movement of life around her.

She saw the doctor’s youngest child and called out to her. The child started, clutched its hands together. Perhaps she had frightened her during her task, after the angel, when she had been required to be fierce and incessant. She called again and smiled and the child approached her.

‘Good day, Abigail. How are you?’

‘Good day.’

The child shifted as it stood, wriggling, lifting its hands to its head, looking around. Margaret felt she could almost see its large, clear soul, too big for the compact body.

‘It is lovely to see you.’

‘Are you better?’

‘The Lord protects, Abigail. The Lord protects. You can tell your father I forgive him. The Lord’s compassion, ’ she laughed, raising both hands, ‘is astounding.’

‘Don’t cry.’

‘I’m not crying. Am I? I won’t.’

‘Good.’ Abigail reached up and held her thin hand with her small, warm hand. ‘Will you do more sewing now?’

 

Matthew Allen struggled to detach her grip from his arm, but as he pulled she twisted her grip into his sleeve. It was the thundery weather that made them worse, the noise, the wind buffeting the windows and wrenching through the woods, all the trees flaring upright in weird light. She asked him, ‘Is it true? You won’t turn me out, will you?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘Will you?’

There were tears in her eyes. He prised at her fingers. He felt another hand on him, on his shoulder, pulling. These hands he wrestled with, in his fatigue: he felt as though they might pull him open finally, spill him like a suitcase full of clothes. He shook himself like an animal and turned. It was John.

‘What is it?’

‘I must talk with you.’

‘Must you? Now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let go of me, then.’

‘You won’t turn me out?’ she repeated.

‘No, we will not,’ Matthew almost shouted, removing her hand by the wrist. ‘Come to my study,’ he said to John. ‘I need, I . . . Let’s just go.’ He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

John walked behind the doctor and stared at the back of his neck, the way it emerged, delicate and narrow, from the stiff ring of his collar. The furrow down the middle of it. The sparks of fair hair. The resistance in it, the effort of will.

Matthew Allen unlocked the door and ushered John into a private red gloom of papers and piled books. John watched as he opened the curtains.

The doctor sat heavily on a chair. ‘So, what is it?’ He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips and checked them for sweat, then wiped them on his trousers.

‘It is my want of freedom,’ John began, standing stout and justified in the middle of the rug. ‘I must . . . you must . . . I must again be allowed beyond the confines of this place.’

‘John, you understand . . .’

‘Lord Radstock to you.’

‘What?’

John saw the doctor checked in his response, looking weary and helpless, and felt his advantage.

‘Well, there we are,’ the doctor muttered. ‘There we are.’

‘Where are we? I’m here, stifled here. I need liberty. I demand liberty.’

‘Do not shout. There’s no need.’

‘There is need. Look here, I had been intending not to tell you this, you little bottle imp, but if it comes to it, so be it.There are things happening here, violations . . .’

‘I said there’s no need to shout.’ Matthew Allen surged to his feet. ‘There is . . .’ He started coughing and couldn’t stop. John waited impatiently, but the fit took hold.The doctor’s eyes thickened in their sockets, spit flew onto his purpling lips. He held up a hand to indicate that it would pass. Eventually, in a few sputtering jerks, it relented. Allen moaned, breathed in carefully.