Nazaire considered the question. He rocked his long, elegant fingers in a gesture of equivocation. ‘Ish,’ he said.
‘Well, there you are,’ said Chastern. ‘No, it isn’t done, Crowe. It is considered – if you will forgive the locution – rather beyond the pale.’
Mr Crowe was dimly amused. ‘What makes me unfit for academic life, Chastern, is my lifelong affliction with talent. It is my tragic propensity for enriching the human store of beauty.’
‘Hmm.’ Chastern looked away, raising his cane to indicate the crystal vase near the foot of the stairs. ‘You received the roses, I see.’
‘Were those from you?’ said Mr Crowe. ‘I assumed Arabella had an admirer.’
‘They are no longer at their best, I’m afraid. It is the time of year, you know. All beauty passes from the world, does it not? All beauty, and all its admirers.’
Eustace stepped forward. ‘The gentlemen have had a long journey,’ he said. ‘Perhaps they would care to be shown to their rooms so that they may refresh themselves before dinner.’
‘You do look a little travel-worn,’ said Mr Crowe. ‘We are lodging you in the primrose room. Cromwell once passed the night in it, while on one of his progresses about the country.’
‘Which Cromwell?’
‘The less convivial of the two.’
‘I shall endeavour,’ said Chastern, rising, ‘to honour its illustrious past.’
‘Crouch will see to it that your baggage is brought up,’ said Eustace.
‘Do not trouble him,’ Chastern replied. ‘It has been a consolation to me, in my senescence, to discover quite how modestly one may live, how few of our accustomed comforts are truly indispensable. I do not burden myself with a great deal of baggage when I am abroad. Nazaire will bring up what little I need.’
‘As you wish, Dr Chastern.’
‘Do you hear that, Crowe? He is punctilious, your man Euston.’
‘Eustace, sir.’
‘Eustace, of course. I do beg your pardon. He is punctilious, Crowe. He attends to the details of propriety.’
‘Oh, he is a paragon of correctness,’ said Mr Crowe. ‘Knows which side of a countess to start with, that sort of thing. I can never keep it straight.’
Chastern looked Eustace over. ‘Yes, I have no doubt,’ he said. ‘I’m sure he thinks of everything.’
Eustace acknowledged this with a slight bow. ‘If you would be so good as to follow me, sir, I will show you the way. Everything is ready for you.’
Clara hurries along the landing, clutching her prim leather shoes by their ankle straps. Her limbs are stiff with cold still, but she barely pauses at the head of the stairs. There is no time now, and anyone who might see her is in the hallway far below. She reaches the second floor, running the entire length of its L-shaped landing. The back stairs are the quickest way to the laundry room.
On the ground floor, she must pass by the kitchens. By now, it will be almost five o’clock, and preparations for dinner will be underway. Her wet hair and clothes will not go unnoticed, even if no one guesses where she has been. Alice, she feels sure, would have a great deal to say about them. She inches forward as she approaches the kitchen doors, pressing herself close to the wall. She listens to the humid clatter of the busy kitchen, alert to any inflection in the noise, any sign that someone might emerge.
No one comes, and Clara slips quietly past, rounding the corner and coming to the end of the passageway. In front of her is the door to the stable yard. To her right are the dimly lit steps that lead down to the laundry.
Clara does not touch the light switch at the top of the steps, which serves both the stairs and the laundry itself. Though the laundry is in the basement, its single window looks out onto the stable yard. The light would be visible to anyone who happened to be outside, and would be unusual enough, at this hour, to arouse curiosity. She hesitates for a long moment at the head of the staircase, clenching and unclenching her fists. Below her, the steps recede into a void that seems almost perfectly black. Slowly, she lowers her foot to the first step.
The stairs to the laundry are made of rough stone. Beneath her stockinged feet, their surfaces are pocked and uneven. An iron rail set into the wall serves as a banister. Clara grips it so tightly that her palm begins to ache. The darkness, once she has gone seven or eight steps down, is complete. She knows she has reached the bottom only when she seeks the next riser with her toe and stumbles forward into nothingness. At the foot of the stairs, she knows, there is a short passageway that leads to the door of the laundry. Here, there is nothing to hold on to.
Clara is not especially afraid of the dark. She is often about the house on some private errand long after everyone is asleep. But the laundry, even in daylight, is a room she enters only when she must. It is cramped and dungeon-like, little more than a boiler room that has been fitted out with crude appliances. Its bare stone walls are veined with sclerotic pipes, its ceiling covered with spreading, tea-coloured stains. It is oppressively hot when the boiler is running and frigid when it is not.
This evening, since it is November and guests were expected, the boiler has been at work for some hours, though the results will be felt only unevenly about the house. When she finds the door, at last, and enters the laundry, the heat envelops her instantly. Clara has a peculiar horror of intense warmth. It is inseparable, for her, from a sense of suffocation. Even in midwinter, she sleeps with her window open. She turns back, gripping the door frame and pressing her forehead against the cool stone of the wall. Her urge is to climb the stairs again, to throw open the stable yard door and gulp the clean air of the autumn evening. But it is the heat, after all, that she has come for. The sooner her dress is dry, the sooner she can go upstairs.
She pushes herself away from the door and looks around her. However brutal the heat, there is at least the faint light from the high window. Clara sets down her shoes and strains to undo the buttons at the back of her frock. She manages only two before growing impatient, bunching the dress instead around her chest and, with some effort, wrestling its sodden coils clear of her shoulders.
She drags a clothes horse closer to the boiler and arranges the dress over one entire side. To make room, she moves a number of small garments, taking care not to examine them too closely. When their shapes are unmistakable – like the cloven flag of a pair of long johns – she plucks them fastidiously from the rung and, with a small shudder, drops them to the floor.
She stands for a while in her shift, grateful to be free of the dress. Even in the insistent heat, there is a faint pleasure in the weak currents of air that reach her skin, but she finds she cannot be still for long. Restlessly, she casts around for some small distraction, even attempting to study the instructions on a box of soap powder. When the moonlight proves too feeble to read by, she begins to wander around the dim room, idly examining the few dull items that come to hand. She is reaching for a tin of starch when her foot collides with a mop bucket.
The bucket tips over with a violent clang, rocking on its rim before settling at last under a work bench. The noise floods the small room, reverberating against its bare stone walls. In the silence that follows, Clara stands helplessly. The disturbance was loud enough, surely, to be heard upstairs. She glances down at herself, awkward in her thin shift, and begins looking for a place to hide.
Set into one wall is a deep bay of airing shelves. The lower three or four are stacked with piles of linen, but the topmost shelf – too high, she supposes, to be of use to the charwomen – is thinly stocked. There, if she keeps herself pressed against the wall, she will be hidden from the view of anyone below.
She clambers up quickly. Compared to the ladder behind the bookcase, the slatted shelves are an easy climb. Hauling herself onto the top shelf, she finds the space cramped, but not unbearably so. It is open, at least, on one side and high enough that she can look out onto the stable yard. From below her rises the scent, faint but wholesome, of freshly laundered linen. She slides towards the wall
and lies still.
The room just above her is the scullery, she thinks. Its sounds, when her breathing settles, are strangely intimate: the knock and scuff of heels; a voice, then others, coalescing in a fug; the scrape of utensils, water-dulled or bright. The other sound – regular and percussive – is inseparable at first from the working of knives against boards. Soon, though, it detaches itself, grows near and unmistakable.
It is the sound of footsteps, brisk and sharp, approaching along the passageway from the kitchens. Someone is coming.
The footsteps draw closer, nearing the end of the passageway and the top of the steps. Clara presses herself against the back of the alcove. She cannot be seen, she feels sure. Even if the light is turned on, whoever it is will do no more, surely, than glance about the room and go back upstairs.
She takes the smallest possible breaths, flaring her nostrils so that each inhalation is almost soundless. The footsteps cease, just as she expected to hear them on the steps. Someone is looking for the light switch, perhaps.
Or someone is already on the stairs, shoeless now and silent.
How many steps? Clara tries to remember. She counts with a fingernail on her palm.
… six, seven, eight, nine …
A door slams. The sound, after such a long silence, is colossal, but she realises, the flare of panic fading in her chest, that it came from above her. The stable yard door, then. The footsteps resume, slower now and more deliberate as they negotiate the uneven cobblestones. Clara unflexes, takes a long, rich breath. Outside. Someone is outside in the stable yard, though for what purpose she cannot imagine. The footsteps come and go, crossing the same short distance, over and over.
Very slowly, she works her way back to the edge of the shelf, straining upwards a little on her elbows. It is uncomfortable, and the view is constricted by the deeply recessed window, but she can see a swathe of the stable yard that stretches almost to half its width. The rain has stopped, and the cobbles have the muted gloss of eel skin.
Clara sees her then – the woman. She wears fine stockings and high, gleaming shoes. Her scarlet dress, or the lower part of it, is of a sumptuous fabric. Because the laundry is in the basement, its window onto the stable yard is almost level with the ground. Above the woman’s hem, Clara can see nothing.
Even so, she is sure. It can only be Arabella. The guests can be excluded, since there are no women among them. The servants are all occupied elsewhere, and none of them is likely to possess such clothes. It is Arabella. It must be.
Brightness sweeps across the stable yard then, followed by a smooth and resonant rumble, close enough for Clara to feel it in her chest. The car surges into the yard, the one she saw from the tower. It seems even larger now, more forbiddingly grey. She tenses, retreating slightly but unwilling to give up her view.
The engine is stilled and the light vanishes. The driver steps out, fluidly unfolding his height. As he does so, the woman crosses quickly to the car, coming fully into view. It is Arabella, just as she knew it must be. She wears a fur over her red dress, and pulls it closely about her as she waits, holding herself stiffly in the cold. She is beautiful, Clara supposes, as Mr Crowe’s companions always are. The tall man does not immediately acknowledge her. Instead, he scans the buildings that encircle the stable yard, intent and methodical as before. Clara recoils, even in the darkness of her hiding place, as his gaze passes over her window.
He turns to Arabella and they begin talking immediately, as if resuming an earlier conversation. They exchange no obvious greetings, addressing each other in a way that seems familiar if not intimate. It is possible, Clara supposes, that they were introduced in the house just now. Mr Crowe may have presented Arabella to the guests as they arrived in the hall. It is possible.
But Clara sees none of the propriety and deference of those recently acquainted. If anything, Arabella seems to become agitated as the conversation continues. They are not strangers, these two. They are something else, something Mr Crowe knows nothing about, though he is always so certain of everything. It is strange to think of. Arabella listens as the tall man says something, then shakes her head. When he repeats it, she makes an emphatic, slicing gesture and turns to leave.
The driver moves to intercept her. With shocking swiftness, he brings his hand to her throat, pushing her back against the car. Arabella holds herself still, straining upwards slightly to relieve the pressure on her neck. He leans over her and speaks carefully into her ear. Though his arm is held inflexibly, his posture is otherwise relaxed. His expression, visible to Clara in profile, is smoothly composed. Though she cannot turn her head, Arabella’s eyes flicker towards him as he speaks. He relaxes his grip, studying her as she nods in response to what he has said. Finally, he releases her, inspects her briefly and moves to the back of the car.
He busies himself at the luggage compartment for some time, though he removes from it only a single small valise. He works calmly, showing no further interest in Arabella. She turns unsteadily to examine her reflection in the car window, touching her throat with disbelieving gentleness. She huddles in her fur, eyeing him nervously, until she has persuaded herself that it is safe for her to leave.
Clara hears the door slam upstairs. From the passageway, she hears Arabella’s footsteps, more rapid now than when they were approaching. She listens until they recede beyond hearing. Keeping her eyes fixed on the driver, she retreats again into the shadows at the back of the shelf.
She lies as quietly as she can. He is out there still, the tall man, and the house is full of strangers. Nothing is as it seems. It is not only Mr Crowe who is being deceived, but Eustace too. There are dangers he keeps from her, she knows that much, but what if there is something worse? What if something threatens them that is hidden even from Eustace?
She keeps still, and tries to calm herself. She listens, straining outwards into the darkness, for the familiar intervals, for the cadences of the secret world. She threads the dead veins of fallen leaves, tests each frail filament of spider silk. She combs every seeded drift of air, touches every cell of the silence. She is weightless then, beneath or between the darkness, where everything is as she remembers it and nothing can do her harm.
Twelve
In the dining room, Eustace attended to the last things.
Slowly, he made a final circuit of the great dining table, inspecting each place setting for the slightest imperfection. He paused to lift a claret glass to the light, gently cradling its bowl with his white-gloved fingers while he effaced the ghostly striations of a fingermark. Elsewhere, he made a minute correction to the alignment of a dessert fork, reversing an adjustment that he himself had made a few minutes before.
At the head of the table, he allowed himself a moment to contemplate the scene in its entirety. In the gloom of the grand and dark-panelled chamber, the immaculate white field of the tablecloth, crowned at either end by magnificent, seven-branched candelabras, seemed to be held aloft amid the surrounding shadows. The sideboard, running almost the entire width of the opposite wall, had been arrayed with fruit in accordance with Mr Crowe’s peculiar custom. As always, Eustace took satisfaction in the richness of their colours. The nectarines, of course, in swollen clutches of ruby and sienna; the densely jewelled quarters of pomegranate; the varnish of the cherries, that intimate and perfect red.
It pleased him, the finished tableau of his preparations. It had been a weakness of his, from the first days of his service, to take pleasure in the ordering of fine things in great rooms, to savour the grace and symmetry of their arrangement in the last moments before they were put to use. It was a part of his training that he had taken to with a strange zealousness, a tenderness almost. In these rituals, in the unrushed arraying of beauty, he had felt his new life enclose him. It was a world of weight and permanence, of things that could not be taken away.
Eustace turned to the huge, gilt-framed mirror that hung to one side of the dining table. He leaned towards his reflection to examine his dark collar and la
pels. He undid and carefully reknotted his white tie. After studying his out-thrust chin from a number of angles, he concluded that another shave would not be necessary. He touched the slightly prominent bone of his temple, traced its stark bracket of shadow. His cheeks, too, had come to seem more deeply hollowed. His pallor, like the whiteness of the tablecloth, appeared almost spectral against the darkness of the background.
Still, his age had not marked his face as it might. Was it the face – as Abel had said – of a man twenty years younger? Had he gone so much unchanged? Perhaps he had. There were judgements a man could not make about himself. Although his position obliged him to attend to his appearance, he studied his face itself as little as he could. He saw it – as he saw so much else that he could not account for – and yet it went unseen.
He turned from the mirror. Only one task now remained. It was one he had taken care to leave until last. He lit a long taper from one of the candles on the table and carried it to each of the two large windows in turn. The curtains were not drawn, in spite of the darkness, and an ornate candlestick had been set in each window.
Eustace lit the candles and stood back. The effect, on the whole, was rather pleasing. It was a slightly unusual arrangement, perhaps, but with so many other candles about the room, it would not seem especially incongruous. The candlesticks were silver, well-made things and handsome in their way. Each had an ornamental base, fashioned to resemble a heavenly body. One was in the form of a splendidly radiant sun. The other had a simpler elegance, and was made in the slender shape of a crescent moon.
When Clara wakes, the darkness is complete. There is a lurch of incomprehension as she struggles to recall where she is. She presses her hands against the cold surface that prevents her from sitting up, believing herself, for a few horrifying moments, to be buried alive. It is only when she reaches beneath herself and grips the slats of the airing shelf that she recognises the place, that she remembers what she saw.
The Maker of Swans Page 12