by Louis Bayard
—It’s his dressing room!
—Lord Griffyn’s?
—The same.
—How do you know?
—I don’t. I mean, I do. Well, it’s got boots all in a row and brushes and what do you call ’em? Po-maids. All thrown about, ain’t it? Shoehorns and bootjacks, them what do you call ’em snuffboxes, all tossed in the slop. It’s got to be him, don’t it? A guest wouldn’t make such a muck of his kit, he wouldn’t have time.
—The dressing room…
There’s no need to complete the thought. We both know.
The next window. The next window will almost certainly take us into Griffyn’s bedchamber.
I suppose that knowing this should quicken our pace, but for reasons I can’t define, we are more deliberate than ever in preparing for the next descent, and Colin is visibly reluctant as he crawls once more down the building face, rests his hands on the lintel, protrudes his trembling head into the waiting space. His head, craning for a view, darts from side to side—whether to see better or to avoid discovery, I can’t be sure—and his body actually swings in my hands, like the pendulum of a kitchen clock, before going still again. And then it arches with such a violent motion I have no choice but to pull him up straightaway.
—It’s her, Mr. Timothy!
—You’re sure?
—’Course I’m bloody sure! The blinds was open, and there were…well, fuck it, you don’t think I knows Filly when I sees her?
—And are they…
—What?
—Are they…?
I can’t speak it.
—It were just her, Mr. Timothy. Sittin’ on the edge of the bed.
Philomela. Directly below us. Ten feet from deliverance.
—Wait here, Colin.
—We can both on us go, Mr. Timothy, there’s a balcony, ain’t there?
This I wasn’t expecting: an unadorned piece of masonry, the length and breadth of a coffin, extending three feet on either side of the window and catching us in its grip like a soft stone glove. The good fortune of it is almost more than I can bear. Here we stand, shielded from below by the fog, shielded from above by the sky, Philomela but a few breaths away, and our cab (God willing) just up the road.
As Colin advertised, she is sitting on the edge of a canopied four-poster, her head bare but the rest of her bridal raiment intact. Her face is only slightly averted—we might easily rap on the window and persuade her to open it—but now there is another, larger barrier to consider.
Lord Frederick Griffyn. Standing just a few feet off.
His coat has been shucked. The collar round his neck has been loosened. The red geranium has been plucked from its buttonhole and laid gently on a chiffonier. And at this very moment, with infinite care, Lord Griffyn is divesting himself of his waistcoat.
Precious little of the wedding night about him. He sheds his outer clothing and tugs at his shirt frills with the banal, ritualistic air of a man married forty years. And Philomela takes so little notice of him one might think they were occupying two parallel daydreams—until Lord Griffyn draws a penknife and charges her.
Colin’s hand jumps to the window; my own hand closes round the carving knife in the knapsack; but these are the mere tokens of our impotence, for we are no better equipped to assist Philomela than we were an hour ago, a day ago. We can only watch, with a sense of violation that must be nearly equivalent to hers, as Griffyn removes her shoes, caresses her feet, and, with his knife, scissors the silk stocking from her leg.
But when I see Philomela’s head jerk away, when I witness the tiny, myriad ways in which pride and rage and fear contend within her, then I know that the violation is hers alone to bear. We cannot possibly share it.
There is, however, a chance of reprieve. Griffyn has abruptly left the bed and made for his dresser, and he is reaching for something…I can’t quite make out what…pinkish gold in colour, the size and shape of a fat orange, with sprouts of hard green leaves at its top. He weighs the thing in his hand as if preparing to hurl it, but what he does next fairly steals my breath away. With slow, surgical precision, he drives his knife straight into the thing’s heart—cuts it clean in two, to reveal a beautiful tracery of cream and brilliant red.
A pomegranate.
Ever the good host, he offers half to Philomela and seems not in the least offended when she refuses. Smiling gently, he takes up his half of the fruit and, with his knife, scoops one of the seeds from its casing and mashes it against the girl’s naked foot until the red pulp bursts free. He then pops the stripped seed into his mouth and from there repeats the procedure again and again, seed after seed, until her entire foot is dyed the same ruby colour as the fruit’s flesh. A stain like blood, seemingly ineradicable, until Griffyn begins the slow work of licking it off—his tongue working in darts and feints, his eyes shuddering, his entire face relaxing into a look of deep and bottomless satisfaction.
I cannot look away, any more than I can interfere. Only prayer is possible, and the words go dry on my lips.
But perhaps the mere intention of prayer is enough, for Griffyn, once he has finished his occult mysteries, declines for now to pursue them further, instead moving back to the dresser to extinguish the candle still burning there. He does the same with a candle on a buhl tray, and now a crepuscular gloom settles over the room, liquefying each object and imparting to the air a new solidity.
It also emboldens Colin and me to press our faces against the window. And by some miracle of simultaneity, it sparks Philomela out of the bed and onto her feet. A protective instinct on her part, feeble in itself, but with this added effect: it draws her closer to the window, until only her own preoccupation can keep her from seeing what is so palpably there, not five feet away.
Frantic, we wave our hands in mad orbits, hop up and down in a private trapeze act, but her eyes persist in turning inwards…until Colin, despairing of everything else, falls back on the simplest possible gesture, lays his hand flat against the window like a starfish pressed against the wall of an aquarium.
The very thing. Philomela’s eyes draw in, her head pops back. Her mouth forms a word or a name, or perhaps just a bubble of astonishment.
There is barely time enough even for that: Griffyn has now wrapped his arm round her waist and is guiding her back to the confines of the four-poster. If he were to glance out the window—or even take a single survey of her face—he would realise that something was amiss, but he is far more concerned with the positioning of her body between the immaculate white sheets. Takes great pains to get it right, arranges the tresses of her hair on the pillow, extends her arms, tilts one hip towards the ceiling, parts her feet. And then, like an artist perversely intent on shrouding his own work, he begins to close the organdy bed curtains.
The heavy crimson fabric drags along its cumbersome track, smothering the light, transforming the bed into a glade. It swallows Philomela’s head, then her torso, then her feet.
And the only reassurance I can take is that she knows, she knows that once those curtains are drawn, we are lost.
No way of being sure, really, what words or intonations she uses. All I can say for certain is that with just a few feet of curtain left to draw, Griffyn pauses in his work and inclines his head towards his bride’s.
Ten seconds…twenty seconds…my heart pounding away the intervals, Colin’s heart pounding right along…and finally Griffyn’s hand drops to his side. He takes a step towards the window.
Colin and I lurch back to our respective corners, press ourselves against the balcony’s perimeter. We hear the sounds of a window being dragged open against its will. An ancient set of blinds, jerked upwards. And then a voice, at once fluty and grainy, shot through with amusement.
—There you are, petite gamine. Fresh air aplenty.
I close my eyes. I draw in my breath, and at the same time, I draw in Griffyn’s words:
—Do you remember, jeune fille? Do you?
And when I open my eyes again, the window
stands open, and the blinds are all the way up, and Griffyn has turned his back on us and is, at this very moment, stepping towards the bed.
—Do you recall what happens to naughty girls who make naughty noises?
It may be the window, so shockingly open. It may be the sight of that long, wagging finger. Whatever it is, it’s too much for Colin. Not pausing for a signal, he squeezes his little body through the opening and, before I can even make to follow, hurls himself at Lord Griffyn’s elegant back.
The good lord topples in stages. First to his knees, in an attitude of mock piety. Then, as the full brunt of Colin’s weight makes itself felt, he collapses belly first on the Indian matting.
What an anticlimax is this! The man we have spent an entire day hunting offers no resistance whatsoever when I roll him onto his back…barely blinks when I press the butcher’s knife to the brown skin of his neck—not even when a tiny petal of blood blossoms forth.
—Not a word, Lord Griffyn. Not a word, or I’ll slash you from ear to ear.
If he is astonished, he gives no sign of it. Every possible reaction has been so speedily absorbed that he looks only as though he has been expecting us for a very long time.
—Tie his hands, Colin.
Our rope ladder, of course, is already spoken for, so Colin must make do with the silken cord of Griffyn’s dressing gown, which has been draped over the doorknob to the adjoining room. The sash serves its new purpose admirably, and I think Colin takes special pleasure in forcing Lord Griffyn into a sitting position and yanking the bonds as tightly as he can round his wrists.
Nothing, however, disturbs the composed features of our host’s face. He merely cocks his head to one side and, with a quiet twinkle, says:
—I should have been only too delighted to include you on the guest list, Mr. Cratchit.
My name. My name, coming from his mouth.
—Although I’m not sure girls would have been quite to your taste.
The knife draws back from his throat.
—But why quibble when you have brought such a darling little boy with you? Good evening, my dear! Would you like me to show you round downstairs? I know some frightfully rich men, simply sneezing with loot. I could introduce you to all of them.
—I could interduce you, too. Blokes as would peel the skin off your bones, inch by inch.
—Ooh, delicious.
One can’t always tell, with well-bred people, whether they are seriously entertaining a suggestion or simply being polite. But there is in His Lordship’s smile some answering chord—some presumption of affinity—that, more than anything else he could have done, recalls me to my rage. Everything now is fuel for it: Griffyn’s long, oddly shaped body, swelling at the hips; Colin’s bruised face; the pink residue on Philomela’s bare foot, the ivory obscenity of her costume.
I raise the knife. Higher. Higher.
And then, like ligatures, Colin’s slender fingers wrap round my belt.
—No, Mr. Timothy. Come away.
—It’s what Philomela told us to do.
—No.
—Kill them before they kill us. And I didn’t listen, and now Gul—
Most embarrassing: I can’t even voice the last syllable. It is out of kindness, perhaps, that Colin assumes the role of speaker, raising himself on tiptoe and whispering in my ear:
—You ain’t the one to do it, Mr. Timothy. It ain’t in your nature, is it?
But it may well be in Philomela’s nature, for as I step back, she is coming hard on, and before anyone can stop her, she has snatched the knife from my hand and driven it in a clean, sure line towards Lord Griffyn’s face. The knife halts a mere inch from his mouth and then begins to inscribe a slow circle around his bulbous lips. A bizarre, almost religious gesture—I can’t make sense of it until I remember, in a flash of second sight, the scene by Lord Griffyn’s carriage. This was the very sign he made to her: Breathe a word to anyone, it said, and forfeit your tongue.
The knife goes round and round, scoring the darkness, but the steel of that blade is nowhere near as hard as Philomela’s eyes. Her brown irises have contracted into something black and impermeable—incapable of admitting light—and the breath steams from her nostrils in fierce bursts, and her fingers tighten round the handle of the knife.
And then, gradually, the fingers loosen again, and her breathing subsides. She takes a step back. She lowers the knife to her side. She says softly:
—Nothing.
And which is more remarkable? That she should have come to such a conclusion, or that I should have reached it at roughly the same time? The conclusion, I mean, that killing Lord Griffyn would be an act of purest futility—fatuity, even. You may plunge a dagger through him, drive it straight to the other side…you will find nothing to kill.
Philomela hands the knife to me. Wipes her hands along her flanks. Then, looking back at Lord Griffyn, she murmurs:
—More.
—More what, Philomela?
—More.
Helplessly now, she grabs a fistful of bridal gown, shakes it at me.
—More girls, you mean?
A long, pained silence.
—Where are they, Philomela?
And now comes the mask, woefully familiar, rolling down her face and clouding everything from view, as impenetrable as the fog that hovers just outside the window. And once again, I have the strongest urge to barge through it—drag every last secret into the light—but I feel Colin’s chastening hand on my sleeve.
—Time to go, Mr. Timothy.
And he’s right—of course he’s right—but how much harder it is to let her slip away this time. She has turned her face to the wall now, adopted a maidenly attitude that puts me in mind of the assurances she gave Signor Arpelli: I am still pure…. I can still be a wife to someone. Quite an aspiration, that. After tonight, why should she wish to be anyone’s wife?
I touch her, lightly, on the back of her head.
—Say good-bye, Philomela. Good-bye forever.
At this, Lord Griffyn, locked for so long in enigmatic silence, finds his tongue again. His voice swells with a rhetorical fervour.
—You put me off, my girl. You put me off, and you know it binds me to you ever tighter.
We turn away, but the voice only rises to new heights of declamation:
—Take pity on your poor knight at arms! Belle fille sans merci, release me!
It is, in the end, Colin’s decision—or more precisely, his inspiration—to take the uneaten half of pomegranate from Griffyn’s dresser and drive it straight into the good lord’s mouth until all further speech is impossible.
—May he choke on it, Colin mutters.
—Amen, says Philomela.
Chapter 21
THIS IS OUR PARTING GIFT TO LORD GRIFFYN: we use one of his bedposts as our anchor. The four-poster holds firm as I lower myself down the western face of the building to the ground-floor cornice. Philomela follows right behind me, moving with surprising agility, for all the encumbrances of her bridal gown. Not, perhaps, the best costume for absconding, but it does impart a certain comical air to the proceedings. More comical still: Colin, bounding down the side of the building like an alpine Eros.
Our rope ladder, we soon learn, will not take us all the way to the ground. And so we must leave it dangling and retrace the path that Colin and I took earlier, walking single-file along the stone ledge. The fog is still dense as porridge, so every few feet, I find myself stopping to be sure my companions are still behind me. And as the glimmering ovals of their faces squint back at me, I am tempted to confess the bald truth to them.
I have no notion of how we are to get down.
We can’t simply jump down the same way we came up: the stone stair cap that served as our launching point is far too small for landing. Our only hope is to find some other route of descent, one that won’t lead us straight back to Rebbeck and his men.
This is the conundrum I am pondering when the branch of an ash tree reaches through the
mist and slaps me across the face. Far from being affronted, I grasp the bough with a faintly amorous intent. I press my chest against it, then set a single foot on it. It yields but a few inches.
Nothing to do now but trust it with my full weight. I hear a sharp intake of breath from Philomela as I leave the comfort of the ledge and wrap myself in the tree’s embrace. I sway there for some time before finding my equilibrium, but nothing breaks or cracks beneath me, and so as soon as the rocking has ceased, I motion for Philomela to follow. After some deliberation and a suitable arrangement of her dress, she does.
It is this new freight that begins to tax the tree’s capacity. The branch rocks more violently this time and sags quite noticeably where Philomela is straddling it. It’s clear I will have to find another perch or risk having the branch give way altogether beneath Colin’s weight.
Fortunately, my feet, bobbing in the dark, find a heavy, knobbed beam, just a yard below the one on which I’m sitting, and as I shift my weight to that lower branch, my boot glances off yet another one, another yard below. In short order, I have descended a good fathom, but then my feet, searching for the next rung down, find only vapour.
Nothing else for it. Against all the tenets of our respective upbringings, we must leap before we look.
That, at any rate, is the intention that slides me off the lowermost branch and suspends me over the grey void. But the intention soon vanishes…leaving behind nothing but cold, hard panic.
Above me: the spectral form of Philomela, unsnagging her dress from an outcropping of bark. Just above her: the descending outlines of Colin’s feet.
And below me: freedom. Or nothing at all.
I can’t say how long a time I hang there. Long enough, in any event, that I begin to experience a certain upswelling of shame, which is strangely exacerbated by the arrival of one of Lord Griffyn’s peacocks.