The Silent Boy (19 page)

On reaching Brazil, the narrator becomes a tobacco planter. After a year or two, however, he sets sail for Africa to buy slaves, having determined that this trade would be more profitable. Unfortunately, he is shipwrecked in the course of the most terrible storm, during which the vessel sinks and all his shipmates perish.

He finds himself quite alone on a desert island.

By this time Charles is leaning over the table so that he may hear every word that Miss Horton says in her low voice. He starts violently at a knock on the door. The maid brings news that the Vicar’s pony chaise has come to collect her.

Miss Horton closes the book and rises. ‘Thank you, Charles,’ she says, quite as if he has done her a favour. ‘I must say goodbye. I hope to return tomorrow in the afternoon.’

She nods to the maid, who picks up the book and the chess set. At the door, Miss Horton pauses and looks back at him.

Without thinking, Charles has risen to his feet. Automatically, without being told to do so, he bows. She smiles at him.

A moment later he is alone, as solitary as Mr Crusoe on his desert island.

The forbidden woods occupy a wedge of land that tapers to a tip to the south. To the north, however, where the land rises, the wedge broadens. The trees flow on, climbing steadily, widening their territory as they go, until they merge with the hills beyond Charnwood.

After breakfast, Charles goes into the Garden of Neptune. When he is sure there is no one to observe his disobedience, he slips through the gate and up the path to the woods.

It is cool and damp under the trees – there has been more rain in the night. Charles walks over a carpet of sodden leaves that muffle sound.

The project of running away does not seem quite so straightforward now. He realizes that he and Louis will need a shelter to protect them from the wind and rain. He walks further and further but does not find anywhere that would be suitable.

‘Trust me,’ Louis says in Charles’s mind. ‘It’s all right. We’ll find somewhere soon.’

Woods can be as hard to navigate as oceans. In the absence of landmarks Charles loses his sense of direction. To his left he sees that the trees are thinning. He changes course.

‘Trust me,’ says Louis. ‘Trust me.’

The land rises. There are fewer trees but the undergrowth is thicker, catching at his legs so that he stumbles, nearly falls and is forced to walk.

Suddenly Charles can walk no further.

‘You see,’ Louis says. ‘I brought you here.’

The incline has led him to the top of a knoll. A stream runs around most of it so it is nearly an island. A old beech tree dominates the little hill. One of its lower branches has broken off. The bough lies like a ship abandoned on land by the tide. Beside it is a yew so old that the parent trunk is dying but the roots around it have sent up a grove of saplings beside the fallen branch of the beech. The tops of the saplings are entangled with the branches of a young birch tree that spreads above it.

The mingled branches make a green cave. Charles stoops and touches the ground. It is nearly dry. Or at least not very damp.

‘We’ve found it,’ Louis says, deep in Charles’s mind. ‘This is our place.’

Everything is right. They have found their secret place. Shelter. An almost complete moat to protect them and to provide drinking water. This is their castle. This is their desert island.

‘Trust me,’ Louis says, and the thought of his voice fills Charles’s chest with a surge of joy. ‘Here we shall be free.’

Charles is lucky that day. Nobody catches him outside the grounds of Charnwood.

He has returned to the Garden of Neptune. He is pacing the length of the garden. It is a day or two since he has measured the garden, apart from the pool’s circumference, and it would not be wise to leave it any longer.

Charles is only halfway along the path, the numbers tumbling obediently over one another in his head, following their unchanging sequence, when the further gate, the one nearer the house, swings open.

Joseph comes through it. He strides into the garden, his face a rigid, righteous mask. He seizes Charles by the hair and shakes him.

‘Devil take you – look at the state you’re in.’

The pain makes Charles’s eyes fill with tears. For the first time he realizes that he is not as clean and tidy as he was. Long streaks of mud decorate one side of his coat and breeches. One of his stockings is around his ankle. Probably, he thinks gloomily, the parts of him he cannot see are just as bad or even worse.

Joseph boxes Charles’s ears. ‘You’ll catch it.’

He escorts Charles to the house’s back door in the service yard near the stables. Mrs Cox is in her room with an account book open before her.

‘What is it now?’ Then she sees Charles. ‘Gracious heaven! What has he been doing?’

‘His Lordship wants him,’ Joseph says. ‘Half an hour ago.’

‘Take his coat off,’ Mrs Cox commands. ‘Fetch damp cloths.’

While Joseph is gone, she tells Charles to pull up his stockings and straighten his breeches. She brushes and sponges him. She reties his cravat so tightly he thinks for a moment she means to strangle him.

A few minutes later, Joseph takes Charles to the library and nudges him through the doorway.

The Count is not alone. Dr Gohlis is with him. The doctor’s mask slips and he cannot prevent his face from wrinkling with disgust.

The Count beckons him closer. For the first time, he embraces him. He does it clumsily for want of practice. He smells of pomade with a sour tang of brandy.

He pushes the boy away. ‘He is filthy. Why’s he so dirty?’

‘He was playing in the garden, my lord. It’s boys, my lord, they’re all the same. He was much worse when I found him, though – me and Mrs Cox cleaned him up.’

‘A child of nature,’ Dr Gohlis says, seeing the matter from another angle, as he often does. ‘The savage coexists, at least in theory, with the most refined and delicate sensibilities. Or rather not, in this case? That is the question, is it not? I must make a note of it before it slips my mind.’

‘What?’

‘The human boy, my lord. I was merely observing—’

‘Yes, yes. You may return to your studies, Doctor.’ The Count’s eyes flick towards Joseph and his hand waves him out of the room after Gohlis.

The Count sighs. For a moment his eyes meet Charles’s. A tiny and wholly unexpected spark of communication leaps between them. Sympathy? Mirth? Whatever it is, it’s gone before the door has closed behind the doctor and footman.

‘Sit on the chair by the window. I wish to have you with me. Take that book on the table. It has pictures.’

Charles does as he is told while the Count turns to his desk and picks up his pen. The book is in French, an account of Switzerland with many views of lakes and mountains. Charles does not find it amusing. He turns the pages slowly and thinks about the castle that he and Louis will share. What will they eat, he wonders.

In a while, he grows bored so he counts instead – the panes in the window, the books on the shelves; whatever is available.

There is a tap on the door and another person enters. Charles cannot see who it is – the chair is angled towards the window and its back blocks out half the room – but he recognizes Monsieur Fournier’s voice.

‘I have been thinking,’ he says.

‘You always do,’ says the Count. ‘What about?’

‘About Savill. About those papers in his bag.’

There is a silence. ‘He has a warrant from a magistrate,’ the Count says in a harsher voice. ‘But he also has a wedding certificate, and there’s no reason to doubt it. That’s what concerns me.’

‘There’s more. I looked at the warrant again this morning while he was sleeping. It’s signed by one of the new stipendiary magistrates. I hadn’t noticed that before. They are the ones who watch for sedition. And it grants him sweeping powers if he needs to use them. He’s carrying a fair sum in gold as well. This can’t be merely a family matter. The long and the short of it is that Savill must be a police informer.’

‘So are you saying that he has no claim on the boy after all?’

‘No, no – unfortunately that part is true enough. But not the whole truth. He’s no ordinary spy to come so well prepared. The question is, who’s behind him?’

‘God damn him,’ the Count says, his voice a low growl. ‘Charles is over there, by the way.’

‘What?’

There are footsteps. Fournier stares down at Charles, who shrinks back into the chair, holding the book to his chest like a breastplate.

‘I have decided to have him in my company more often,’ the Count says. ‘He must learn to know his father. He must learn how a man of honour behaves, and he can only do that by living with one.’

Fournier’s crooked eyebrows wrinkle together. ‘I wish you’d told me he was here.’

‘Why? What does it matter?’ The Count’s voice sounds as if he is smiling. ‘If we can be sure of nothing else about Charles, he is at least discreet.’

The rest of the week passes in this manner. Mr Savill lies in bed upstairs, the subject of whispered conversations among the servants. Miss Horton comes to see Charles on most days, if only for half an hour, and Robinson Crusoe’s story unfolds.

On Friday, Miss Horton comes in Mrs West’s carriage, and he is allowed to drive out with her. The coachman takes them into the village, where the countryfolk watch them pass by. They travel very slowly on the rutted lanes between the high hedges, the machine swaying like a ship on the ocean.

When they come to the long, smooth drive of Norbury Park, however, the coachman urges the horses to a canter. The trees on either side flicker as if alive as the carriage whirrs past them. The horses’ hooves and the remorseless grinding of the carriage’s iron-rimmed wheels become deafening. It is all Charles can do to prevent himself from crying out in excitement.

They stop outside the house where Mrs West lives. It is a big stone box with large windows. They do not go inside but a servant brings out lemonade and biscuits.

While they eat and drink, Miss Horton points out the beauties of the park, gives the servant a message for Mrs West and praises the lemonade. Everything is natural and easy. Miss Horton makes so much conversation that it does not matter at all that Charles says nothing. She talks for both of them.

Once or twice she touches his arm and asks, ‘Do you not agree, Charles?’ but she takes his answer for granted. It is almost as if she hears the words he does not speak.

Charles visits the castle in the woods again, first on Wednesday and then very early on Friday morning. The second time he takes an earthenware mug stolen from the scullery and half a loaf of yesterday’s bread that he found among the scraps set aside for Mrs White’s pig. He hides them behind the fallen branch and covers them with leaves.

‘Now we have provisions,’ he tells Louis, proud of the word which he learned from
Robinson Crusoe
, and proud of his own foresight.

For a time, he is almost happy.

On the way back, Charles loses his way, for this is not a wood with many paths. At last he reaches the edge of the wood but it is not in the same place as usual. He cannot see the gate to the Garden of Neptune. Instead there is a muddy lane strewn with stones. It comes from the hills and goes towards a farm, a huddle of roofs in the distance. It winds through scrubland with a few stunted trees bowed by the wind. Somewhere a cock is crowing, over and over again.

There is a horseman in a blue coat on the lane. He is several hundred yards away and he is riding in the direction of Norbury.

Charles retreats into the safety of the trees. He sets off in another direction, deeper into the wood. He is warier now and less optimistic.

He walks faster and faster, careless of the mud that splashes his legs and the branches that reach out to poke and slap and scratch him. He believes he hears sounds behind him and for a moment he is convinced that the rider is following him.

But that is foolish, and he dismisses the idea. The fear that grows inside him is because he will be missed if he doesn’t reach Charnwood before everyone else is stirring.

He breaks into a stumbling run. A stitch drives deep into his side. His breath is a fugitive’s, ragged and urgent, but he is fleeing towards what he fears, not away from it.

The nights are worse than ever.

The autumn winds are rising, and the trees are swaying like dancers in the grounds. They are beginning to scatter their leaves. Charles does what he can to protect himself – counting and measuring, stuffing rags into his ears to block out the sounds. He would like to block the door with the box but he is too afraid of what Mrs Cox might do.

But how does one block the dreams?

As the winds grow wilder, so does the ash tree that taps on the window.
Tip-tap.

The tapping brings the blood, dribbling from the ceiling, oozing between bare boards.

Twice he wakes up. The second time, he finds that he has wet the bed. Mrs Cox reports the sin to Monsieur Fournier, who orders Joseph to beat Charles.

‘It is for your own good,’ Monsieur Fournier says.

As well as the pain, the heat was unbearable, driving him to and fro in search of coolness. There were dreams of dead women and old wounds. The old question returned: are we innocent when we dream?

People gave him liquids. They sponged him.

The Count appeared, looming over the bed like an angry red cloud, though perhaps that too was a dream.

Savill’s face was swollen on the side where the tooth had been, and the swelling ran up to his brain and down to his neck. If only someone would chop off his head, he thought, he might be tolerably comfortable again.

Sometimes he talked; sometimes others talked; but he could not remember what was said.

Slowly the fever receded and the swelling subsided. He was very weak and slept for most of the time.

There were patches of lucidity, however, and of a blessed absence from pain, which he learned to connect with the glasses of Dr Gohlis’s mixture. Whether it was the same mixture as before he neither knew nor cared. Sometimes it brought relief, and that was all that mattered. What did it matter if they were poisoning him? Only pain mattered. All he desired was its absence.