The Silent Boy (20 page)

One morning he was woken by the sound of the fire irons rattling in the grate. Savill pushed the bed-curtain aside. The fabric seemed heavier than usual.

‘Who’s there?’ he said, and his voice sounded dry and feeble; it belonged to a stranger.

‘Me, sir.’ Mary Ann appeared, a pair of tongs in her hand and a smut on her cheek.

Savill swallowed. ‘What day is it?’

She looked strangely at him. ‘Saturday, sir.’

‘What? Still? It can’t be.’

‘No, sir. You were taken queer last Saturday.’

‘So I’ve been here for’ – he struggled with the arithmetic – ‘a week?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He stared at her, as the information seeped slowly into his mind. ‘A week,’ he repeated, and the very words were wearisome. ‘A week.’

Dr Gohlis came in, rubbing his hands. ‘Ah, that is better, sir. I knew the treatment would answer in the end.’

‘I must get up. I must—’

‘You must do no such thing. The fever is down, and so is the swelling. I believe we have at last expelled the poison that caused your tooth to rot and gave you so much pain. But if you overtire yourself, there is a danger that you will have a relapse.’

‘I cannot afford to lie here.’

‘You have no choice, sir. And you must not have too much society, either. That will tire you as much as exercise.’

Savill sank back on the pillow. ‘I must speak to Monsieur Fournier. Allow me that, at least.’

His eyelids were very heavy. He closed his eyes.

‘You see?’ Gohlis said, remorseless in his authority. ‘It is better to let nature take its course. You may speak to Monsieur Fournier later.’

Fournier came in the afternoon and drank tea with Savill. After the conventional enquiries, he picked up the miniature of Lizzie, which stood open on the night table by the bed. His eyebrows rose and made Gothic arches.

‘A pretty child,’ he said. ‘Your daughter, sir?’

‘Yes. When she was much younger.’

‘There is a resemblance, you know.’

‘To Charles?’

‘Yes. Not as he is now, of course, but when he was younger. Does she know she has a half-brother?’

‘Yes, but not that he does not speak.’ Savill was so weak that his eyes filled with tears.

Fournier sipped his tea. He looked at Savill over the rim of his cup. ‘And does Charles know about her?’

‘Not yet. Only that he has family in London.’

‘Family? Besides yourself and your daughter? I did not realize.’

Savill saw the trap in time. In his way, Rampton was a public figure. If Fournier did not know of him already, he would make it his business to enquire.

‘My sister keeps house for us.’ Savill allowed a pettish note proper to an invalid to enter his voice. ‘The chaise I ordered from Bath – pray, sir, has it arrived?’

‘Alas, it has come and gone. A groom brought it on Monday evening, a loutish fellow, but he would not stay when he heard you were ill.’

‘I will write again directly.’

‘The doctor says you must leave it two or three days. At least. Preferably a week. And even then you must travel by easy stages.’

A silence fell, oddly restful. Savill’s mind began to drift. With an effort he dragged it back to the present.

‘How is Charles?’ he said.

Fournier set down his cup. ‘Ah, yes. Miss Horton is visiting him again this afternoon.’

‘Miss Horton? But what has she to do with Charles?’

‘A good question, sir. She is evidently a woman of some determination. One might almost say that she makes her own reasons.’

‘What do they do?’

‘She reads to him, I’m told. And tries to play games, as far as that is possible. Once they went out for a drive in Mrs West’s carriage. I cannot see the harm in it. She is a member of the gentler sex and partakes of its virtues.’

‘No doubt, sir.’ Savill hesitated. ‘But … does the Vicar permit her to call at Charnwood?’

‘Mrs West tells me that he considers it in the nature of visiting the sick, a duty she practises in the village twice a week in the normal run of things. She has no intercourse with anyone here except Charles and Mrs Cox. Looked at in that light, her calling at Charnwood does not imply that Mr Horton approves of the house’s inhabitants. It is a matter of Christian charity, and therefore entirely respectable.’

‘That alters the case entirely, sir,’ Savill said, his head drooping on the pillow. ‘Let us be respectable above all.’

Savill thought about the key in the wrong waistcoat pocket.

By Sunday, he was well enough to leave his bed for a few hours. He sat in an armchair by the window, covered with a blanket, and stared over the untidy garden to the hills beyond. The woods were a darker green and above them was a heavy grey sky. Once he saw the foreshortened figure of Charles hurrying across the grass in the direction of the Garden of Neptune.

The key fitted Savill’s portmanteau, at the bottom of which was the portfolio that held his warrant and other papers, together with the heavy canvas roll that still contained almost fifty guineas in gold.

If Savill was right about the key having been moved, then his possessions had been searched even before he took to his bed. Moreover, he had been lying here for days in a condition that could scarcely have been more vulnerable. He had been entirely in the power of his hosts and at their mercy. The Count in particular had no reason to love him. They could have searched his belongings a hundred times without his knowing anything about it.

He called for pen and ink and wrote a letter addressed to Frederick Brown, to await collection at the White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly. He wrote that illness had kept him in the country but he hoped to be well enough to leave in a day or two.

Yet, Savill thought as he sealed the letter, he had survived the infection. If their motives were sinister, surely Gohlis could have ensured that the infection became fatal, as so many did? It followed that either his hosts were to be trusted, despite appearances, despite the fact that the Count was determined to keep Charles; or they had discovered the powers Savill held from the Westminster magistrate and had inferred from these that he was a man of greater significance than in fact he was.

The spy for a police magistrate? The secret agent of the Black Letter Office?

His head swam. When it cleared again, he realized his logic was not impeccable. Perhaps his hosts had merely wanted to immobilize him for a while for a purpose he did not understand. His attempts to guess what this might be made his head swim again, and in a moment he fell into a fitful sleep.

By Monday, the pain had subsided. Savill was still weak; but he was well enough for Joseph to shave and dress him, and for him to spend much of the day in the armchair.

In the afternoon, Fournier came to see him, bringing the news that he and Charles were to pass a few hours at Norbury Park on Wednesday, and that Mrs West had promised to send her carriage for them.

‘Mrs West has a desire to improve her acquaintance with him. He is become quite a lion in this village of ours. I understand that Miss Horton will be there as well, so he will not be dull. And she writes that, if you were well enough, it would give her much pleasure if you were to join us. Her carriage is most comfortable, and when you were there you might have a sofa to yourself. Dr Gohlis says the excursion would raise your spirits. I have promised that we shall not allow you to overexert yourself.’

‘But I would take another’s place in the carriage, surely?’

‘Not at all, sir. Monsieur de Quillon and Dr Gohlis are detained by their work. Only Charles and I will be going.’

As Fournier was leaving, Savill asked to see Charles. Twenty minutes later, Joseph brought the boy up to Savill’s bedchamber. He sidled into the room and made his bow. Savill told him to sit opposite him.

There was a forlorn quality about him. He sat very still. Only his eyes were restless: his gaze darted over the room, out of the window, towards Savill, though he did not look up at Savill’s face.

Someone, probably Mrs Cox, had supervised his toilette. His black clothes were threadbare but perfectly clean, as were his face and hands. His hair had been brushed back and tied with a ribbon. But his wrists poked from the cuffs of his coat and shirt, and his hair needed cutting.

‘I hear Miss Horton has been reading to you,’ Savill said. ‘That must be pleasant.’

Charles showed no sign of having heard him.

‘Your sister Lizzie is fond of reading too. Perhaps she will read to you as well, if you wish it.’ The lack of response had an oddly wearying effect but Savill persevered. ‘I shall tell you about where we shall live when I take you away from here.’

At last there was a flicker in the eyes, a sudden intake of breath.

‘I shall take you back to London. Your sister is your nearest relation, and so you will live with us, at least for a while. My own sister, who is a widow, keeps house for us. Your mother’s uncle will want to see you too, but he lives elsewhere.’

Charles’s eyes flicked towards Savill’s face for an instant.

‘I live in Nightingale Lane, which is on the northern edge of London, near some grand houses they have built in a place called Bedford Square. Nightingale Lane sounds rustic, does it not? Perhaps it was once, but the town has grown up around it. There are four small houses in the lane and they all have gardens and old trees, where birds nest.’ Savill paused, suddenly homesick. ‘Sometimes it isn’t like living in the town at all. I have a walnut tree so at this time of year we eat a vast deal of walnuts.’

Charles stared at him.

‘I have heard a nightingale singing in the garden,’ Savill said. ‘So the name is still apt. I was with Lizzie, your sister, and she was transported by it. Myself, I think the nightingale’s song is overrated. Lizzie says I am too plain and prosaic.’ He smiled at Charles and listened to himself babbling on like a lunatic. ‘There is an alehouse in the little road beyond the lane, and their garden backs on to mine. The establishment is called the Royal Oak, which sounds rural as well. Sometimes we hear the coachmen and hackney drivers singing there, and to my mind their songs are more agreeable than the nightingale’s, at least at the start of the evening. Besides, their songs are much better than the noises of the builders and the passing traffic that we hear in the day.’

Savill ran out of things to say. The boy’s silence was like a wall. Savill’s words bounced off it and fell to the ground.

‘Pray pass me that little case on the table by the bed,’ he said.

At first, Charles gave no sign that he had heard. Then he turned and looked towards the bed. Like a sleepwalker he moved across the chamber, picked up the miniature and brought it to Savill. He dropped it on the outstretched palm of Savill’s hand, taking great care that their two hands should not touch.

Savill opened the case. ‘This is your sister,’ he said, angling the portrait towards Charles. ‘The likeness was taken when she was younger than you are now. You may hold it if you wish, and look at her more closely.’

Charles stared at the miniature. Slowly he backed away, inch by inch, foot by foot. He swallowed. His eyes were very bright. As Savill watched, still holding out the picture of Lizzie to him, the boy’s mouth trembled and he bit his lower lip.

‘Yes,’ Savill said. ‘There is a similarity, is there not? I believe your mama must have looked much the same when she was a girl.’

The following day, Tuesday, it is raining. Miss Horton comes in the morning.

‘I’m rejoiced that Mr Savill is so much better,’ she says to Charles as she removes her bonnet. ‘But saddened too – I suppose it must mean that you will soon be leaving?’

He watches her nimble fingers. She has bitten one of the nails to the quick.

‘I shall miss our times together,’ she goes on. ‘Shall we read some more?’

Robinson Crusoe is progressing most satisfactorily. With the help of the items he has salvaged from the ship, he does his best to construct a life for himself on the island. First, to protect himself from possible savages, he makes a fortress where he stores his goods.

Charles cannot help thinking of his own castle in the woods. He and Crusoe are similar, for each of them has been imprisoned by solitude, Crusoe by being shipwrecked on a desert island and Charles by the loss of his voice. God has locked them into themselves and thrown away the keys.

Crusoe finds wild goats, which he kills and eats, which is just what Charles would like to do, though he is uncertain about how one would kill, cut up and cook a goat in the middle of a wood where it is nearly always raining.

The likeness between the two of them increases when Crusoe erects a wooden cross, into which he cuts a notch to mark every passing day of his captivity. Charles imagines the castaway staring at the notches and counting them, first from left to right and then top to bottom, and later in reverse, to make sure the total is the same in both directions. In that way, he contrives to count time itself, despite the fact this is an invisible thing.

The excitement becomes unbearable when Mr Crusoe discovers the imprint of a naked foot in the sand. It implies, of course, that he is not alone, locked in his solitude. Another human being is on the island.

At this very moment, when the thoughts are bubbling through Charles’s mind at a furious rate, Miss Horton closes the book. She looks at Charles.

‘We shall read some more later,’ she says.

How can she be so sure, Charles wonders? So many things might prevent her from continuing.

For once Charles wishes desperately that he could speak, that he could express his enthusiasm to hear more of the story. Instead he looks at Miss Horton and hopes that his face will say it all.

If it does, she appears not to notice. She is absorbed in arranging her shawl around her shoulders, standing on tiptoe to see part of her reflection in the mirror that hangs above Mrs Cox’s table.

‘Will you walk with me? It is a shame to frowst indoors.’

Charles, still sitting at the table, touches the book’s cover.

Miss Horton glances down at him. ‘Not now, Charles. Another day. You will need your hat. Where did Mrs Cox put it?’