The Maker of Swans

by Paraic O’Donnell

  ‘Dissuade them? On that point, at least, I may offer you guidance. You will not dissuade them, my friend. They will not be put off, not in this instance. It is ludicrous, of course, this prohibition of theirs. “Any member who, in the exercise of his sacred gift, occasions mortal harm”, and so on at very great length. A “cardinal misuse”, they call it, yet they spend their lives planting knives of one kind or another in each other’s backs. But such was the world in which they were formed. Secret societies with Latin mottoes, midnight convocations and so on. Hysterical and overwrought nonsense, all of it, but there it is. They have made a code of it, and if they do not defend it, they have nothing.’

  Eustace considered this. ‘I had thought there might be some token we could offer them.’ He gestured towards the stacks outside. ‘Some rarity, perhaps, that has come into your possession. We would compensate you more than fairly.’

  Cromer shook his head. ‘Your employer, Eustace, already possesses most of the true treasures that have passed through my hands. There are items on his shelves, you know, that would stop the traffic if they were ever to come to auction. And, who knows? Perhaps they will prove amenable to such tributes. Do not set much store by the hope, though. I speak as your friend – as your friend and his – when I say that the price they exact will be one that is not so easy for him to pay.’

  ‘I know you are right in this,’ Eustace said softly. ‘It is the conclusion I had reached myself. And yet I felt I must ask.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Cromer. ‘What if there were some means within your grasp and you had neglected them? You would have been remiss. But take heart, Eustace. It is not for nothing that Mr Crowe has come to occupy the place he holds. One does not simply call a man of his abilities before the headmaster. This will not go easily for anyone.’

  Eustace tasted his whisky, felt the coarse flare of its heat at the back of his throat. ‘His ability to empty bottles is all that has been in evidence of late. That and whatever displays of artistry he reserves for his soprano.’

  Cromer opened his hands, regretful but benevolent. ‘We cannot always be our finest selves,’ he said. ‘Do not despair of him. He has not been tested yet. And you, Eustace. You will not be found wanting.’

  ‘I am not sure, Elias. I fear that I have been already.’

  Something appeared to occur to Cromer then. He hesitated briefly before speaking again. ‘I have some little intelligence, perhaps, that may be of use to you.’

  Eustace set down his whisky glass.

  ‘It will be Chastern himself who attends to this. Who else will accompany him I cannot say, but he will come.’

  ‘I thank you, Elias, but this much I had surmised.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But listen. Chastern is every bit as you will remember him. Age has not softened him in any way that I can discern. Quite the contrary is true. But he has not been quite untouched by the passage of time.’

  ‘You will have to speak more plainly, Elias, if this is to serve me. I do not follow you.’

  ‘He has begun to suffer, Eustace, from some affliction. What its exact nature is, those who talk to me do not know, but he contends with some diminishment of his strength. It is slow, they say, but it cannot be stopped. The day will come when it claims him entirely.’

  ‘Claims him?’ Eustace said. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘They are not immortal, Eustace. They belong to a different age, of course, and the years have been long. They are not like you and me, I do not say that, but surely you did not think—’

  ‘I am not an imbecile, Elias. There are certain questions, however, that I grew weary of asking a long time ago. Curiosity does not fit a man very well for the life we chose. This affliction of his – forgive my bluntness, but what does it profit us to know of it? Will it drive him towards one course or another? Is he bent on some purpose, now that he knows he is passing from this world?’

  Cromer deliberated for a time before he spoke. ‘I will say only this,’ he said. ‘Our friend’s gifts hold a singular fascination for Chastern, and I cannot but think that he nurtures it in his decline. He envies those gifts, though he thinks it his duty to curb them. I cannot tell what he craves most. To possess them somehow? To put them to use in his own service? To discover their source? To destroy them? All of these, perhaps, even if that is impossible, for none of us is governed entirely by reason in the end. But listen to me, and to these extravagant suppositions of mine. I was more cautious once, and they do not amount to very much, I’m afraid.’

  Eustace gave a small breath of laughter. ‘There was no one else who could have told me so much. What do I have to complain of?’

  ‘You might have wished for a softer chair.’

  ‘But then I would not have learned so much.’ Eustace smiled briefly. He rocked his glass, watching the light slide over the coppery dregs of whisky. ‘Before I go, Elias, if I may – there are some other matters I wish to discuss with you.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Cromer. ‘It is a pity, you know, that my services are no longer charged for by the hour.’

  ‘It is in that former capacity that you may aid me. I do not know what lies ahead, Elias. There are certain arrangements I wish to make, eventualities that I must provide for.’

  ‘I have not practised for some time, my friend. The law may be much changed. You would be better served, I think, by a man of more recent training.’

  ‘In these matters, Elias, as in so much else, there is no one else I can trust.’

  Cromer took a long breath, then rattled open one of the lower drawers in his desk. ‘Very well,’ he said, laying out a rumpled notepad and uncapping his pen. ‘How may I be of service?’

  Eight

  Clara pauses at the foot of the last staircase. She forces herself, while she counts to a hundred, to stand perfectly still and to listen. She hears nothing. The rooms on this floor were shut up long ago. Once a year, their doors are unlocked and their furniture unshrouded for spring cleaning. The only sound that reaches her comes from far below, where she hears the dim shudder of heavy furniture being shunted aside. Eustace left instructions that the floors were to be waxed.

  The tower itself is not a secret place, though it is rarely visited by anyone but Clara herself. The staircase by which it is reached is steep and narrow. Eustace has pronounced it unsafe, and threatens on occasion to have it closed up, but she has so far managed to dissuade him. The chamber that forms the tower’s upper storey is the highest room in the house, with views over the grounds from all four of its windows. It was used, at one time, as a map room and a large table dominates its centre with deep pigeonholes set into its base. The pigeonholes contain a great number of yellowed and tightly scrolled maps that Clara spreads out and studies in moments of idleness. The plans for most of the original gardens were laid out in this room, and designs were made – some of them fascinatingly elaborate – for additions to the house that never came to be built.

  Today, she ignores the map table. She crosses without pausing to a narrow but finely carved bookcase set into an alcove in the east wall of the room. At its base is a cabinet, whose doors are inlaid with an intricate depiction of the Garden of Eden. The doors are flanked by elegant columns, each surmounted by a capital that has been carved, with great skill and intricacy, in the form of a dragon’s head.

  Approaching the dragon on the right, she eases her fingers with hesitant delicacy into the cleft between its jaws. As she probes more deeply, the polished jags of the teeth press against her wrist. The lever she is seeking is set into the roof of the dragon’s mouth. To pull it, she must hook her finger backwards in a recess so narrow that she sometimes fears it will become stuck. No adult’s hand, Clara is almost sure, could possibly operate it.

  As she feels for the channel, her fingertips graze the dragon’s palate. It is rough and grainy to the touch, quite unlike the polished outer surfaces of the head. The lever, when she finds it, is unmistakable. It is a slender peg, slightly hooked at one end, with the fine, easily warmed sm
oothness of ivory. It is like stroking a strangely contorted piano key.

  Clara presses the hooked end towards herself. She must be firm, she knows, or it will not work. The hidden mechanism may be intricate, but it is not delicate. It yields, when she has exerted the right pressure, with a dusty click. She hears the groaning of taut wire and the muted knocking of heavy counterweights. Finally, the bookcase creaks free of the wall. The opening it exposes is just wide enough to allow her passage, and emits a breath of cold and faintly musty air. Clara squeezes through the gap and into the chilly cavity, heaving the bookcase closed behind her.

  It is utterly dark, and the space is so shallow that at first she cannot even turn around. To do that, she edges further in, where the void widens a little into something resembling a large chimney. Here, Clara pivots to her right and feels for the first cold rung of the iron ladder. She does this slowly and tentatively. Once, when she reached for it, her fingertips brushed instead against the warm and coarsely furred pouch of some small body. It squirmed instantly from her touch and skittered away. Clara stood for half an hour in the dark before she could bring herself to move.

  Once she is on the ladder, she climbs up six rungs and reaches above her head. Her fingertips skim cold iron until they graze the thick, rust-scabbed edges of the hasp. She pries it free and, with some effort, works the bolt from its recess. Now, at last, she can begin to push open the hatch.

  At first, she raises it only by a few inches, so that she can peer out across the roof of the tower. It is absurd, she knows, to fear that someone might be out there, but she is growing ever more cautious in her habits. The roof is a mossy, stone-flagged square, enclosed by a parapet as high as Clara’s waist. It is occupied only by a flabby and incurious pigeon, which is not in the least perturbed by her appearance.

  Clara opens the hatch fully and climbs back down a rung. Now that daylight has been admitted to the shaft, a rough shelf is visible just below the level of the roof. From the back of the shelf, she pulls a chest. It is a squat box, sturdily made of walnut and brass. She used to store it under her bed, preferring to keep its small treasures close by her, but she brought it here some days ago. There are strangers in the house now. Her old hiding places are no longer safe.

  She takes the opera glasses from her knapsack, polishing them with the old pillowslip she used to wrap them. In daylight, their mother-of-pearl surfaces are even more fascinating, their skeins of iridescence altered by the slightest tremor of her hands. It is like when, on a summer’s day in the garden, a damselfly pauses on a halm of grass. With each minute twitching, it discloses a new sliver of astonishing colour, as if the fine blades of its wings have sliced open the sunlight itself.

  She turns the glasses over. Between the barrels is a brass spindle that can be turned by a ridged wheel. It is used, Clara supposes, to adjust the focus. It occurs to her, as she toys with the wheel, that she ought to try the glasses out before locking them in the chest. After all, they may not have been used for years. They will be of no use to her if they have seized up, or if their lenses have clouded over with mildew. They will not help her to keep watch over the Estate, to see what might be coming.

  She climbs out onto the roof of the tower, crawling to the battlement so that she cannot be seen from below. Even through her woollen stockings, the stone is frigid and damp. She props herself against the parapet and draws up her knees, positioning herself so that her head is inches from the nearest embrasure. From this side of the tower, the view is to the south, over the formal gardens to the maze of yew hedges beyond. At the centre of the maze is a large, perfectly square pond, where herons often stop to fish. A heron ought to be easy to focus on, standing in the water with that strange, martial stillness.

  She is dusting off the lenses when she hears a shout from the garden. It is a man’s voice, distant but harsh.

  Clara presses herself against the parapet, keeping absolutely still. After a few moments, the man’s voice is raised again. It is something about the maze, she thinks. His tone is impatient, hectoring. This time, another man answers. It is the Crouch brothers, the men that Eustace has put to work in the gardens.

  Carefully, she inches towards the embrasure and peers through the gap. John, the larger and slower of the two, is near the centre of the maze, slipping in and out of sight as he paces along a corridor of yew. He calls out again, and Clara strains forward a little further.

  His brother Abel has halted on the wide central path that bisects the parterre. Setting down his barrow, he cocks his head attentively. John calls out again, and this time Abel throws his head back in derisive laughter. He shouts back, giving some brief and jeering answer, and waits to hear its effect. When John bellows at him again, his agitation mounting, Abel sniggers in satisfaction. He picks up his barrow then, and continues on his way.

  Satisfied that she has not attracted their attention, Clara shifts her position slightly to widen her view. Hesitantly, she raises the opera glasses to her eyes. To her disappointment, she sees nothing but a pair of greyish discs and, when she moves, a blurred disturbance of green. At the edges of her vision, she notices the spidery encroachment of her own eyelashes and realises that she is holding the eyepieces too closely. She experiments with this distance, and with the ridged brass wheel that adjusts the focus.

  At first, she turns the wheel too far in one direction or the other, making everything seem smeared and amorphous. She is patient, though, and learns the tiny adjustments that must be made to bring clarity to the edges of objects. Gradually, she becomes accustomed to the stillness that is needed to locate things and keep them in sight.

  She focuses on Abel, who is wheeling his barrow past a bed of greying lavender. The opera glasses do not magnify things quite as much as she had hoped, but Clara can make out details now that were not visible before. She notices that his jacket fits him poorly, and that his boots seem new and little worn. The barrow he is pushing is all but empty, containing only a spade and a hoe, yet he handles it awkwardly, making frequent corrections to his course.

  There is another shout from John. His voice sounds clearer now, and sharpened with anxiety. Clara turns the glasses towards the maze, tracing its pathways until she finds him, his head protruding a little way above one of the inner walls. He has climbed a ladder, resting a pair of shears on the upper surface of the hedge. His face is glistening, pink with exertion and rage. There is something forlorn and a little comical about him.

  Clara catches most of what he says, now that he is atop the ladder. He uses coarse words, some of them obscenities she has never heard uttered aloud, but there is no mistaking his meaning. John Crouch is lost in the maze.

  He has gone in, she supposes, with the purpose of trimming the hedges – a job that might take him days if not weeks – and cannot find his way out. The maze, once you have navigated it five or six times, is no great puzzle, but John has never entered it before. He is weary from his day’s work, she supposes, and the light is beginning to go.

  She swings the glasses back to Abel, finding him on a bench seat at the centre of the parterre. He rolls a cigarette, listening with amusement as John’s entreaties grow desperate.

  ‘I’m off inside, mate. See about a couple of bottles of cider.’

  John roars an oath in reply. Abel laughs, reclining contentedly to light his cigarette.

  ‘I’ll keep one here for you, shall I? And what about a bite to eat? There’s pork pies in the pantry the size of dustbin lids.’

  Clara turns her attention again to John, adjusting the opera glasses so as to bring him into clearer focus. He is slumped over the top of the hedge, resting his elbows on the foliage. She watches as he lowers his head onto his thick forearms, covering his face so that she sees only the sweaty tangle of his curls. He is a big man, and coarse in his habits. There is something abject, though, in his misery and humiliation. There are some advantages, she thinks, that he lacks. If his ingenuity is strained, he depends for aid on his brother, aid that Abel enjoys withholdin
g.

  She puts down the opera glasses and looks unaided at the maze. From her vantage point in the tower, its design seems absurdly simple. Still, she knows the traps and illusions that might have thwarted him: a zigzagging corner leading to a narrow aperture that is easily missed; an interlocking pair of spiral corridors that seem to curve endlessly inwards. She wonders how many attempts he made before giving up. She checks his position again, tracing the path that would lead him out. It is a simple geometrical figure, nothing more – a sequence of lines and vertices with no great complexity to it. To him, though, it is entirely mysterious. He might just as well find himself at the centre of some vast and unknown continent, without even the crudest of maps to guide him.

  Clara takes out her sketch pad and begins to draw.

  By the time she reaches the garden, it is half dark.

  On the gravel paths of the parterre, even she cannot approach in silence. Abel looks up, acknowledging her arrival with a grudging upward flexion of his head, then his face settles into its habitual arrangement, an expression of watchful and somehow conditional tolerance.

  ‘Nice evening for it,’ he says.

  Clara’s answering gesture is slight and diffident. She raises a hand, but only to waist height. Her wave is quick, a four-note trill on the air. She looks away.

  ‘Out with the sketchbook, is it?’ Abel continues. ‘You can do me if you like. Maybe take a bit of time over it. My own mother wouldn’t recognise that other one.’

  Clara pauses, surveying his features. The drawing she made, that day in Eustace’s office, was a slight and unfinished thing. It was something she did almost reflexively, her way of registering the strangers’ arrival. She studies him now, seeing not his face but an assembly of marks and shadows, the way it is made. For his almost colourless pupils, a hard grey, barely grazing the page, then hatch in the deeper shadows around the eyes. Note the bags beneath them, those loosely rucked declivities, with a few gathered threads of soft pencil. The taut smirk, finally: a clutch of seams and a thumbed rift of charcoal. There would be no great difficulty in it. She shakes her head then and walks on.