The Invisible Hand

by James Hartley

  There were shrivelled, mummifying heads on poles along the sides of the walled-in, fortified courtyard and a scabby bear stalked back and forth in a rusting cage on an otherwise empty platform. Hunched over women were elbow deep in a wooden tub whose grey, acrid water sloshed down to where a group of half-naked children paddled in the overspill on the slimy cobbles.

  The Great Hall where Leana had come with King Malcolm and the Thane of Ross was a shadow of its former self. Hunched over figures were eating somewhere in the darkness, near the remains of the great fireplace, but no torches hung from the walls and no logs spat and flared in the grate. There were no shields, colours, paintings or standards on the walls: no decoration at all to light up the gloomy interior.

  Leana could hear some kind of far-off screaming which came and went with the lowing of the cattle. This sound, she realised, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up, was coming from the dungeons.

  They were assigned to a room on the second floor which had a fire burning and fresh straw in the mattresses. The first night Leana stayed alone in the room as the doctor attended to the Queen. She took supper there and passed her time drawing or staring out of the windows at the countryside. The doctor, who returned to bed sometime in the very early morning, told her, “Nothing happened this night. Tomorrow you will come with me.”

  “Very well.”

  “You may leave the room during the day but not the castle.”

  “Very well.”

  “I will sleep.”

  Later that morning, stepping out into the cold, fresh air on the high walls where the breeze was blustery, Leana took in a calmer scene than the night before. Perhaps the menfolk were out, or asleep, but the castle grounds were busy and calm. Some peddlers had been allowed in and a market set up and despite the armed guards passing about the stalls, Leana felt it secure enough to risk a visit.

  She spent a pleasant few hours browsing the shops and stands and watching juggling and minstrel shows. The fools and jesters were funny even if their uniforms were dirty. After a lunch of salted herrings and bread dipped in bad wine, she watched a half-decent avian demonstration with sad-looking kestrels and falcons. The high point was when a hawk escaped its keeper and flew away over the battlements.

  Later, when the market was packing up and emptying, Leana noticed the beginning of the feeling she’d sensed the night before creeping back. Fires were being lit by nastily laughing men. The bear had been wheeled out and was being needled: it was growling and snapping, long trails of white goo dangling from its maw. She saw the clowns from earlier in the day swigging from bottles, passing coins. Something bad was coming with the night, Leana felt.

  She hurried upstairs and was pleased to find the doctor awake. They took a light supper – the doctor advised her against eating too much, given that they might be awake most of the night – and they left soon after for the Royal Apartments accompanied by a guard.

  They passed through raised swords and axes and alongside many bowed heads until a final, liveried servant declared, “Her Majesty’s private apartments” and opened a creaking door.

  Leana, the doctor and the Queen’s chambermaid, who had been waiting for them on the final landing, stepped into a warm, strange-smelling darkness. The chambermaid was a haggard-looking young woman with trembling lips and wet eyes. As they walked inside the room she hung back behind Leana and the doctor, hands fumbling nervously in the front pocket of her apron.

  Leana could make out a few objects in the dark: curves of gilded furniture, the edges of the windows and battered shields hanging from the walls. She thought she heard a hissing and looked up at the rafters, at smoke swirling up to some sort of ventilation hole, and fancied she saw, just for an instant, the snakish form of a witch, watching and widening its eyes. In a blink the vision vanished. Perhaps it had never existed at all.

  “Here she comes!” hissed the Queen’s chambermaid. They all saw a ghostly opening in the darkness, a doorway, and a shadow fill the rectangular space. Lady Macbeth, face lit by candlelight, came gliding through it.

  Leana watched the Queen drift into the room and was shocked. The last time she’d seen her, Lady Macbeth had been a proud, awe-inspiring specimen but this creature was a sunken, broken forgery of that original. This was a tortured soul with black eyes, holding a peasant’s candle, speaking as though drunk or mad.

  She’s sleepwalking, Leana thought. She looks pitiful!

  “This disease is beyond my practice,” the doctor whispered.

  Leana felt great compassion for the poor Queen.

  “Banquo’s buried,” Lady Macbeth was saying. “He cannot come out on’s grave.” As she spoke Leana felt a growing sadness at the lady’s plight. No wonder things were so wrong. No wonder the castle and the country were in such a mess. It felt wrong to see anyone like this, let alone the Queen.

  Stopping suddenly, Lady Macbeth seemed to think she’d heard a knocking and turned to the door with innocent eyes, looking like the young girl she must once have been, before peering into the corners of the room as if for help. Then the same blank gaze alighted directly on Leana and the Queen held out her hand and said, “Come, come, come, come, give me your hand.”

  Although the doctor tried to hold her back, Leana lifted her arm. The Queen’s touch was freezing cold, like a chilled corpse.

  “What’s done cannot be undone,” the Queen was saying, leading Leana from the chamber. The doctor and chambermaid looked on, wide-eyed but helpless. “To bed, to bed, to bed.”

  Leana let Lady Macbeth lead her through into the Queen’s personal bedchamber. The doctor watched in horror as the door was bolted and sealed.

  18

  An Acausal Connecting Principle

  Sam woke up with odd, staccato phrases running through his mind; things that people had said in his dreams and that he felt he had to remember. His dream had been vivid and strange and there had been no obvious explanation for it. The most vivid scenes replayed in his mind as he changed and that made him think that what he had dreamt about was important and that he needed to remember it and that it meant something. But what?

  During the cold morning run and a dull breakfast – the porridge was particularly stodgy – Sam found it hard to properly focus on what he was doing. He felt as if one part of him were still dreaming; still in bed. In Assembly he jolted awake when Mrs Waters read out the name of the Indonesian boy he’d spent Exeat with, who happened to be sitting next to him. “What did you do?” Sam whispered to Pram, when the focus of the school’s attention had moved elsewhere.

  “Ping Pong,” answered Pram. When Sam pulled a questioning face, Pram clarified, “In the library.”

  “Ah.”

  Sam and Pram went their separate ways at the door of the Assembly Hall but the acts of one that day were to have an effect on the life of the other. While a thick-headed Sam went back to the house and got his books, Pramoedya Mohamed took his place with the other naughty boys and girls outside Mrs Water’s office. There were three more condemned persons there that morning and all turned their backs in shame as the junior girls came down the stairs in coats and scarves.

  Pram entered the Headmistress’s office hoping for the best but fearing the worst. He came out steaming with a sense of sincere injustice. Mrs Waters had threatened to call Pram’s parents in Manila and ask them to talk to their son in person, something that Pram thought excessive. In reality, of course, Pram was afraid of his father’s reaction: how many times had he told him that the family were sacrificing everything so that Pram could have a better education? So that he could learn English and have a better start in the world than either his father or mother could have ever have imagined?

  If anything Pram’s anger had only increased by the time he entered the stuffy confines of Room Fourteen for a dose of double English. Confined there, he became overwhelmed with a desire for revenge. He felt like a surfer teetering on the edge of the board, the wave toppling over him. In the class he was invisible – the others igno
red him – and sitting at a desk in the second row, near the window, thus ignored by all, he took out a small knife he kept in the band of his Y-fronts and scratched out H-A-C-H-E-T in the desk. He was about to start on the next word – something vulgar – when there was a knock at the window directly above him.

  Pram’s blood ran cold. It was Mr Wilde, looking down haughtily from atop his long white nose. He raised and waggled a bony, much-ringed finger. The children in the classroom fell silent.

  Pram, knowing what was coming, stood up and walked out

  He was never seen at St Francis de Sales again.

  At exactly the same time as this was happening, Sam was running out of the locker room of St Nicholas House. The combination on his lock hadn’t worked and Mr Dahl had had to come and clip it off with a pair of elongated plyers. He was late and his locker was open to anyone who might want to look in it but he had his books and his bag and he was on the way.

  It was bitterly cold that morning but Sam wore only a green scarf over his uniform: none of the boys wore coats unless it rained. His hair was growing, thick and forward combed, and he had a look about him, a confidence that he hadn’t had before. The bell for the start of classes rang as he jogged up the Quad steps with one hand in his pocket to arrive at Room Fourteen just before Mr Firmin.

  The teacher made a grand show of bowing for Sam and ushering him into the warmth. “You first, my good man.” The students settled at the sight of the teacher. Sam took a place near the window and was quickly informed of what had happened with Pram a few minutes earlier.

  “He’s gonna be kicked out for sure,” Sam whispered back. “What was he thinking?”

  The class began, Firmin handing out homework. Sam had scored well in his essay, which had been a story about how it must have been to be a person living in medieval Scotland at the time of the events in Macbeth. “All your own work, Lawrence?” Mr Firmin had asked, moustache bristling, as he’d slapped down the papers.

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

  “Well, then, very good. Got a bright future ahead of you if you keep writing like that.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Sam, reddening.

  “Your mother would be proud.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  As the class went on Sam looked down at the desk. Pram’s last piece of handiwork was glaringly clear among all the biro drawings and old graffiti. There were still splinters sticking out of the edges of letters and the letters themselves had been so deeply and violently carved that Sam could detect the anger the other boy must have felt as he’d done it – and he sympathised. Waters could get you like that.

  Mr Firmin’s voice droned on and the wall heater sent up a steady stream of heady, warm air. The letters on the desk began to move in a very slow circle. Sam enjoyed the effect, half closing his eyes and letting his eyeballs roll backwards in their sockets. It was a lovely feeling, like having your back tickled or your feet rubbed.

  “And who is the Queen of the Witches?” asked Mr Firmin.

  “Hecate,” answered a boy’s voice.

  “Hecate,” Sam repeated, seeing the word lined up in the desk before him, as though Pram had carved it there.

  “Good, good,” stated Mr Firmin, moving on.

  But Sam had blinked his sleepiness away. The letters had realigned themselves. Now they read HACHET again.

  Waters is Hecate, Sam thought. He remembered Leana’s words.

  Waters is Hecate, he knew.

  19

  Is A Dream A Lie If It Doesn’t Come True Or Is It Something Worse?

  “Hold my hand.”

  “I can’t see you. Where are you?”

  “Over here. Open the shutters, my child. Push them open and you’ll see me.”

  Leana crept across to the grey outlines of the windows and worked the mechanism. Outside she saw the hanging eye of a waning gibbous moon. Grey cloud floated out on either side of the disc like shredded wings.

  “Turn, my child.” The Queen’s eyes sparkled like moonlit water at the bottom of a well. “Come to me. Hold my hand, my sweet little girl.”

  Leana came and sat on the edge of the bed. She could hear bats chirping.

  “We had a daughter once, you know. A very long time ago it must have been. The poor mite was very ill, you see, and they took her away. She had to be taken away. She was very ill.” The Queen was stroking Leana’s hands with hard, bony fingers. “Are you her?”

  “I think not, ma’am.”

  “But they say you are an orphan, girl?”

  “I lost my family to the sea, ma’am, that is correct.”

  “You have no family, my dear. Perhaps you are my daughter?”

  “Perhaps.” Leana hadn’t known what to say. She felt sorry for this woman. And, having never known her real mother, some part of her wanted all this to be true. That she was a princess. That this proud but broken woman was her mother. She craved and missed her mother even though she’d never met her.

  Lady Macbeth began to sob quietly. She leaned her head against Leana’s shoulder. Her hair, which tickled Leana’s face, was hard, prickly and dry. The tears, as they rolled off the Queen’s cheeks, burned.

  Leana stared up at an oval mirror on the wall behind the bed. It had a brass frame which gave a convex reflection of the scene. She stared into the mirror and wondered, as usual, if she were really present in her life. Who was that girl she could see?

  Tattered clouds had come in to cover the moon. The entire chamber was cast into a faded-blue half-light. Leana was thinking, A Queen is a person. We are only people. I must be nice to her. I must pity her as a mother. As a person. She may be my mother. What did the old lady in the cave tell me years ago? Everyone is your brother and sister – everyone your mother and father. You are never alone.

  “Ye bring her comfort,” a deep male voice said.

  Leana saw the King standing in the open doorway. His boots and tunic were spattered with wet earth which Leana could smell.

  Macbeth looked ill, crooked of spine. He was peering at her from behind a dark, unkempt beard which covered almost all of his face. His hair was long and tousled, twirled in places. Loose, frayed strands swung about his drooping shoulders as he stumbled forwards into the room. The door closed behind him as if by magic.

  “Your Majesty.” Leana stood and curtseyed. “Are you hurt, sire?”

  “Sit, maid, sit,” answered the King, waving an arm which seemed to turn the wrong way at the elbow. Leana watched as Macbeth lowered himself into a wooden chair and swigged from a dark bottle he was holding. He sat with his thighs apart and his head lolled to one side, kicking off his filthy boots. “She sleeps?”

  “That she does, sire.”

  “And she thinks ye our daughter?”

  “That she does, sire.”

  “You know, I’ve seen this before. This thing she does. This unquietness.” The King pointed the bottle at Leana. “After she lost ye, or whoever it was – I mean whoever it was wouldnae matter, it just mattered that she lost someone – our child – what matters was that every night I would wake to find her at the foot of the bed searching the floorboards. Every night for a year after we lost ye.” He smiled in a horrible way, like a shark. “She would have nae recollection in the morning, though, ye see. Of ye or the search.”

  Leana listened to guffaws and smashing bottles from outside. “I’m glad to be of some comfort to Your Majesties.”

  “Who are ye, girl?” asked Macbeth, narrowing his eyes. “I’ve seen ye before.”

  “A doctor’s servant, Your Majesty. Nothing more.”

  “Not this time. No, no. Ye’ve been here before. And on what business?”

  Leana was worried the King had remembered her from the night of the banquet. “No, Your Majesty. I’ve not been here before.”

  “Ye have the mark of the darkness upon you.” Macbeth began to laugh. It was slow at first, quiet and not unhappy. But as he saw the change in Leana at his words Macbeth leaned his head back and roared with
laughter. His eyes were wet when he finished. “Ha! ’Tis true! Ye, too, know them, do ye not? And ye, too, have listened too much – thought too much upon their words!”

  “They know of things we cannot understand,” Leana answered. She knew the King was talking of the witches.

  “Aye, right. Things we should not know of,” Macbeth replied bitterly, assenting. He drank long and sat silently fuming. “If our Queen’s not your mother, lass, who is?”

  “Nobody, sir. My mother is dead, sir.”

  “Ye have no family?”

  “I say and know this to be true, sire.”

  “How did they perish?”

  “Swallowed by the sea, sir.”

  “And ye survived?”

  “By God’s great mercy, sir.”

  Macbeth seemed unsure. “Who told ye this story? Remember ye all that happened?”

  “My guardians, sir. I was too young to remember.”

  “Your guardians?”

  “Aye, sir.” Leana found she couldn’t lie. “Three sisters.”

  Macbeth thought for a long minute, staring at Leana, his lips moving as he procrastinated upon her answers. His eyes widened slowly. “Be ye of woman born, maid?” he asked finally, quietly, almost growling. Leana thought him aggressive and confused. His face paled. “Answer! Be ye of woman born?”

  “Of course, sire,” was all Leana could think of to answer.

  “Prove it.”

  “Sir! I don’t know…how…”

  The King stood and dropped the bottle, which shattered. The Queen remained snoring. Without turning, Macbeth banged on the door behind him with both balled fists.

  “I mean you no harm, sire.”

  “Silence, devil!”

  Leana remained very still. “Your Majesty. I had a family!” she pleaded, becoming emotional at the memories. She was afraid of the look in Macbeth’s eye.