In the tower, and still she hears nothing. The scrape of breathing only. The blood mutter dark and constant, her own red noise. In her rusted lung. Her seized-up heart. There is no waiting. Only inside, and she will be safe. In the place behind, the where she kept secret. In the dragon’s mouth. If she can just— but it is deeper between the teeth, and harder to— her fingers knit and swell, a tongue in the wrong mouth.
Open. The dark is open at last, and she is. Here is her, in the safe. She is in the cold unseen, in the hidden everything. Here, no one will. She is the only one who. No one will. She could sleep, even. With the small wings dancing, the long-ago music.
She is almost, then. It is somewhere in the near dark, the snakes and ladders. Just a small unclimb to the. It is where she. In the rosewood, her treasures. A small gleam in the locked heart. And sleep then. No long ago, but only now.
‘Little one.’
The hands. They are from the other dark. Behind her where she cannot. And how did they, those long fingers. How did he.
‘Little one.’
That voice. And held now, so she cannot. Butterfly held, and the crushing heart unwinged.
‘Little one, we are going on an adventure.’
Eustace moved without thought.
They had not been in the library. The door was unlocked, but there was no sign that they had entered. He looked for Arabella, but she too had vanished. Later. He would find her later. He would make her answer.
But Clara. Clara.
She was not in her room, or in any of her usual haunts about the house. She might have gone out about the grounds, though it would by now be bitterly cold. She did so often enough, even when nothing troubled her. And she was troubled, of course. All that had changed in these last weeks, the strangers coming. It had unsettled her. He had seen it and done nothing.
Mr Crowe was gone from the dining room. Abel too, though he had given the signal before leaving. Both candles were out now. The sun and the moon.
His office, then. He could go without his overcoat, his hat and gloves. But the item in the locked drawer beneath his desk – he would need it now. He would put it to use if he must. He moved without thought. There was nothing to think about. Nothing was left.
A car, from the stable yard. A car starting.
He was running, hurling himself along the passageway. Skidding at the corner, his shoulder slamming against a wall. Seconds to the stable yard door now. He could do it. He was close enough, could reach the garage. The Jaguar would not be found wanting. Abel had serviced it, and they had locked it away. It could not have been touched. He could do it.
But the door, the door would not give. Not the lock – there was weight against it, he could feel it when he shouldered it, the heft piled low down, like sandbags. He swore again. Brutal words, a thick bolt of them. Words he had not used in years, words from before. Matters were simpler now. Sacrifices must be made.
By the kitchen door, then. It cost him a minute and a half, two minutes maybe. He would make up for it. Leave the locks – he and Abel had used two on the garage door. Leave them, there was no time. With a half-brick from the yard – the crude heft was welcome in his fist – he put the window in, blunted the standing shards. He hauled himself inside.
The ignition flickered only for an instant. With a violent snort, the Jaguar was running. He coaxed the motor to an urgent pitch and reversed it, slamming it against the garage wall. A workbench collapsed in a spill of clattering tools. Paint cans crunched and spat. He felt for first gear, throttled deeply before releasing the clutch. The wheels spun but he clawed for traction, in second gear even as he hit the doors, one arm braced across his eyes. He felt a moment of strain, then the staves burst apart like skittles. The hasp of the lock screeched across the bonnet. The windscreen held.
From the stable yard, he tore across the north lawn. The grey car was on the avenue, a little beyond the fountain and running without lights. If he cut across the grass, kept it flat out, it would put him close. It could be done.
From the house, on his left, he caught a small incision of brightness. The front door open, and Abel running towards him, one arm upraised. His gun was drawn and he limped slightly. Eustace did the reckoning. He could slow for him, but not stop. Let him take his chances.
He dropped from fourth to second, veering out from the shallow curve he had plotted. Leaning over, he thumped open the passenger door. Abel sprinted to close the distance, his injured leg buckling twice. He clamped a hand over the knee to brace it, forced himself upright. When he was close enough, he lunged for the door, scrabbling for grip on the passenger seat. Eustace took hold of his belt and surged back up to speed. By the time Abel bundled his legs in, they were passing the fountain at over sixty.
Eustace glanced at him. The bruise was succulent, lush as an orchid. It spread from cheekbone to temple. Something broad and flat had done it. An iron or the blade of a shovel. He gave him a minute to breathe. ‘Where is Mr Crowe? What did you see?’
‘They put me out. Never felt nothing. I woke up, he was gone. No one could have done different.’
‘You snuffed the candle? The sun?’
‘Like we said.’
‘And you saw no one else, after you came round?’
‘You’re the first.’
Eustace said nothing. Ninety. A hundred. He strained forward in his seat, trying to pick out the car in the darkness. There. A narrow scratch of incandescence, then the sound of the shot.
‘Those our guests in the car?’
Eustace shook his head. ‘Chastern is already gone.’
‘How?’
‘A butcher’s van. He had help – a rat in the kitchen.’
Abel hissed in disgust. ‘Well, John’s at the gate. He’ll put manners on the other one.’
Eustace glanced at him, growing impatient. ‘The child is in the car.’
‘Eh?’
‘The child,’ he snapped. ‘The child, Clara. Have you listened to nothing I said?’
The grey car had come to a halt just short of the gates. Eustace braked and wrenched the wheel, hurling them aside from the avenue. He braced himself hard, sure they would roll, but the back drifted outwards on the frosted grass. For a strange, somnolent moment, there was quiet, then the momentum found them, spun them twice. A young birch stopped them, the rear wing splintering its barely whitened trunk.
John Crouch stood in the avenue, bringing his gun level. It was his warning shot they had heard. Eustace hauled himself out, but Abel could not move. Something held him in the passenger seat.
Eustace shouted, unrestrained. ‘John! John, the child is in the car! Clara is in the car!’
John raised a hand to acknowledge that he had heard. He braced the rifle again, checked his sight. ‘The sun and the moon, Mr Eustace. The sun and the moon.’
‘Eustace,’ Abel called after him. ‘My ankle’s caught in something. Get me out.’
There was movement from the grey car – the driver’s door opening, Nazaire bringing himself slowly upright. He held Clara, his left arm bracing her narrow chest against him. She held her head weakly. Her feet were limp beneath her soiled hem. Eustace felt a breach in himself, a cold insurgence. He drew his own gun.
‘We are going on an excursion,’ Nazaire said. He did not raise his voice. Not even here, amid all this. His words were addressed to Eustace. ‘A little drive. She will be returned, of course, once your master has done as Dr Chastern asks. He has work to do, I believe. A manuscript to deliver.’
John cocked the rifle. ‘No one is going nowhere,’ he said.
‘Eustace,’ Abel called again. ‘Get me out. This needs all of us.’
Nazaire looked for Eustace, blinking in the Jaguar’s headlights. ‘Talk to him, Eustace. She is skin and bone, this child. I can feel every rib. The slightest pressure would— well, let us not be uncouth. It will not end well.’ He kept his right hand unseen, somewhere close to her.
Clara stirred, hearing his name spoken. Feebly, she lifted
her head to search the darkness. From her nose, a stripe of blood crossed her lips, spreading in a grubby delta over her chin. Eustace raised his own gun.
‘No one leaves,’ he said.
Nazaire sighed and stood clear of the door, keeping Clara pressed to him. He stepped backwards, towards John. ‘You are not lucid, Eustace,’ he said. ‘You will not fire, not with the child between us. Will he? The fat one with the rifle? Perhaps he will.’
‘You stay where you are,’ said John. ‘You stand where you are and you let her go, or I will put you down like a fucking dog.’
Nazaire ignored him, treading carefully backwards. Clara’s legs swung helplessly. ‘Yes, perhaps he will. He will need no luck,’ he said. ‘At this range, he could take my head off. But what would happen then? Men move violently as they die. It is electrical, or so I have read. I can feel her every rib, Eustace.’
‘You stand fucking still,’ said John. ‘You said it yourself. I’ll take your fucking head off.’
‘Eustace,’ Nazaire said. ‘I was told you were a man of reason. You disappoint me.’
‘Get me out of the fucking car!’ Abel’s voice was taut. There was urgency in it, and pain.
Eustace held his gun steady, advanced towards them. ‘A man may lose his reason.’
Nazaire lowered his head and gave a long sigh. He took another step backwards, so that his neck almost touched the barrel of John’s rifle. Still holding Clara, he pivoted swiftly, lowering himself as he spun and halting slightly, as if wresting himself free of something. As he came fully about, he rose and stepped neatly aside. Behind him, John had lowered the rifle, held it loosely apart from him. He stared down at himself, his expression wondering. The cut was a foot long, and gaped like a pillowslip. From it, his bowels peeked, unspooling in plump tangles. He made to cover the place with his hand, but could not bring himself to touch it. Thicker coils slipped from the wound, their weight unsettling his balance. He shifted on his drenched legs.
Abel screamed and pounded at the window, but Eustace ignored him. He watched Nazaire pick his way back to the car, Clara struggling to twist from his grip, to see over his shoulder. He pinned her more firmly, but she saw. As he folded her into the back seat, she jerked her head free for an instant. She saw.
John sank to his knees, the rifle slipping from him. He looked at Clara – open-mouthed, as if she were an apparition – and at himself again, staring in perplexity at the lush knots that spilled from him.
Clara’s mouth gaped. She wrestled from Nazaire’s grip as he pulled the door closed, clawing at the roof of the car. He gathered her thin wrists, wrapping them in one hand, and shoved her onto the back seat. He was behind the wheel, and the car was somehow in motion. The door was slammed shut.
Eustace paced rapidly towards the car, the gun raised in his tensed arms. Clara was clear of him now. He need only sight him clearly. An instant would be enough. But the windows were darkened. The Jaguar’s lights made mirrors of them. He saw himself only, shadowed and desperate, his tie coming undone.
The car surged forward, swerving around John. He lowered himself gently to the ground, curling sleepily around the ruins of himself. The lights were turned on only as it reached the gate. Eustace raced towards them, out onto the lane.
He ran for as long as he could see the tail lights. They seemed tauntingly close at first, haloed with drizzle and malignantly red. They slipped from him quickly, though, the gulf of distance deepening beyond crossing. Still he ran, long after running was senseless. He ran until he could no longer separate them, until there was a single mote of radiance that stuttered among the trees and was gone.
II
A Whiteness
Thirteen
The boy comes from nowhere. He comes from the end of the world.
He knows this because his father tells him so. He tells him one morning, when they have gone out into the marshes to fish. For a long time, his father stands without moving, his line a bright curl that lazes on the water. The boy grows restless and tugs at his coat, but his father clips his cheek and sends him running. He has no use for him yet; he must wait until he is called. Climb that tree, his father says, and tell me what you can see.
And so the boy climbs the tree, a willow whose limbs rise in a close splay from among the reeds. He climbs as high as he can, making a seat for himself in the narrow crook of two boughs. From here, he has a clear view in all directions. He looks upstream first. It is winter, and the reeds have the pallor of old parchment. Beyond the marshes, and as far as he can see, the country lies flat under the colourless sky. Nothing rises from it but a scattering of ash trees, a clutch of willows as grey as his own. In the distance, there is nothing.
The boy looks the other way. The town is downstream, but it lies mostly out of sight. Even their home, which is nearby, is hidden by a bend in the river. On the estuary, the wind is up, and close to shore the weather roughens the water. The waves are edged with the clean grey of new ash and darken to the silver of beech bark.
They came to the town because his father is to run the ferry boat. He paid good money to the aldermen for his lease, and he will get his due from it, whatever the men of the town may say. They are fishermen, his father says, and think they are masters of all boats. In truth, they are only farmers in oilskin coats who would not have wits enough to run a ferry boat. They would fill it with mackerel and send it to the bottom.
His father talks often of the men from the town. At night, when the boy has been put to bed, he raises his voice and slams his mug down on the table. They do not trust strangers in this town, his father says. They are superstitious, and know no more of the world than savages. They spend their time out at sea, talking to mermaids and Dutchmen; they must have four or five sons each when they might keep one alive by teaching him to swim.
The boy has heard such things many times. He doubts that the fisherman have spoken to a real mermaid, but he believes the rest. He is a stranger now too. Every day, in the small schoolroom above the excise office, he is asked where he comes from. He is asked his name, and he gives the one his mother chose. They laugh at him and call him a pansy. It is no name for a boy, they tell him. Have they no boys’ names where you come from?
‘Where do I come from?’ The boy repeats the question to his father.
‘This is where you come from now,’ his father says. He gestures towards the town with his free hand, keeping himself otherwise still. He keeps very still when he is fishing. ‘We have made our home in this place, though some don’t like it. You come from here now, you may tell them.’
The boy looks towards the town again, where those houses that can be seen are crouched and drab among the fading reeds. ‘But what is it called?’
‘This place?’ His father glances up at him. ‘Ask your mother, she’ll tell you.’
The boy looks towards their house, not understanding. His father gives a low laugh.
‘The end of the world, she says. This place is the end of the world.’
In the evenings, when Eleanor has settled in her crib and his father is still on the river, the boy sits with his mother at the kitchen table. She is skilled in dressmaking, and comes by a little work in the mending of clothing and oddments. It is a low occupation, she says, and hardly worth her trouble for the pennies it brings in. There is better work, sometimes, making blouses and fine gowns for the few ladies of the town who can afford such things, and this she keeps aside for the evenings.
The boy spreads his primer before him on the oilcloth. While he reads aloud from that day’s lesson, his mother opens the lacquer workbox in which her sewing things are kept. The bobbins of thread are neatly arrayed by their affinity of colour, and little cushioned compartments keep every thimble and pair of scissors in its proper place. She is watchful even while she is about her work, and chides him if his attention falters. Still, he is often distracted, his eye drawn especially to the silks and laces his mother uses, to the intricate gauzes and lavish velvets. The richness of these materials
seems extraordinary to him, next to the plainness of their home and belongings.
His mother was used to such fine things at one time, and does not find them strange. She knows their proper names, and how to judge their quality. She bargains ably with the draper, though he is well established in his trade, and the boy has heard her complain of his ignorance. Half of what she needs for the better garments, she says, cannot even be had in this place.
Though she seldom speaks of the life she knew as a girl, the boy’s mother abides by certain customs. She keeps a small garden outside the kitchen door, though she says it is a bad place for it, for the plot is full of silt and given to flooding. Still, she has made something of it. She grows herbs there, and a rose plant she brought with them when they came here. Its flowers are the colour of cream, welling from a small pinkness like the corner of an eye. Once, when the river was in spate, half of all she had planted was swept away in the night. It is a curse and a nuisance, she says, but she will not give it up. She has few enough consolations in this place.
On summer evenings, the boy is free of schoolwork and his mother has fewer commissions to occupy her. From the garden, they gather petals for rosewater. When they have filled a shallow basket, they crush the petals in tender fistfuls before dropping them into a pan of simmering water. When it has been passed through muslin, the rosewater is set out to cool, and the scent that rises from it threads every part of the air.
It is a fragrance that seems to the boy to belong elsewhere, and it is entwined with his faint images of his mother’s childhood home. She has told him only a little, but he knows that she lived in a house with a piano, and that there was a sitting room where two birds were kept in a golden cage. She was not sent to school, as he is, but was taught at home by a lady with a small dog.
‘It is strange,’ he says as he breathes it in. ‘It makes me think of other places.’
She looks at him for a moment, her head inclined to one side. ‘Then you must remember how it is made,’ she says at last, ‘so that you may keep some by, and have it always – for you must always think of other places.’
The Maker of Swans Page 15