Tomorrow

by Damian Dibben

  ‘Isn’t she the most astonishing—’ Sporco pants.

  ‘Not now,’ I snap, shouldering him on, but he dodges me, goes back to her and introduces himself, not in his usual ham-fisted way—indeed, the realms have changed him—but shyly, treading on the balls of his paws.

  ‘Hello, I am Sporco. That’s what they call me.’ Very delicately, he takes a sniff of her behind. ‘Ravishing,’ he whispers, his tail swinging in manly strokes. For once, the object of his attention is not repelled.

  ‘You’re golden,’ she says coyly, shaking in her little costume, her tail setting off in tandem with his. The ringmaster swats him away and when Sporco goes back for more, the audience laugh, but this time the ringmaster kicks him.

  ‘I’ll come back to find you,’ Sporco says as I pull him on and the dog in the bonnet watches, as she’s cajoled back to work, getting up on her hind legs and parading in her dress and bonnet.

  We follow a platoon out of the square, kilted, pasty-skinned and thick-calved brutes. In my state, they seem to sway with the street, the whole city does, buildings like shipwrecked crates rolling in waves. I boil and freeze. Damn my master’s potion.

  ‘A ball! Look, a ball,’ Sporco yaps, his attention already moved on to a new mischief. The way is choked with carriages and a dance is taking place inside a broad house. A dance as the city sweats with war! Army balls are the maddest and strangest, as everyone knows that deadmen turn amongst them, but no one knows who. ‘We’ll hear music,’ Sporco barks, bounding up the steps.

  ‘No!’ I pull him back with my teeth and he lets out a yelp. ‘Not now. Not tonight. No dancing. I am sick. This way.’ I totter up the alley at the side of the building. I need to get away from the noise. ‘I am sick in my head.’ That is understating it: in all my years I have never felt so wretched. When my master used such tonics, he would barely administer a drop, whilst I must have had a large dose, and now the wearing off of it has acted like an acid, stripping away all the wholesome parts of my mind to reveal a rotten mess beneath, a place where there is only fear, obsession and elemental dread.

  There are some steps that lead up to a little landing before a shuttered-off doorway. I go up and sit, pressed in the corner. It could be my alcove in Venice. It’s the same size, the size of a tomb, and smells just as damp. I rest, trying to calm the rage inside and Sporco hovers half up the stairs, unsure how to behave, like the dogs you see sometimes with violent, drunken masters, permanently on tiptoes, frightened of doing the wrong thing and being hit.

  On the other side of the alley, on the same level as us, at the back of the house where the ball is taking place, a window is open. There’s a burst of music as a lady enters with three gentlemen. ‘Come in, duke, sirs. This is my husband’s study.’ The alley is so thin and high it amplifies her voice. She could be standing right beside us. ‘Please excuse the mess. He shall be with you instantly.’ She’s stout, jewelled and ballgowned to the extreme, but her face is coagulated with uncertainty. She’s about to exit when she says: ‘Should we stop the dance? It would be a great pity of course, but—’

  ‘No,’ the duke replies. I can see only his shadow against the wall, but his voice has sardonic bite. ‘No need to set tongues wagging. French spies, who knows where they lurk.’

  ‘Spies?’

  ‘They dance too. Like you and I. Carry on as if nothing has happened. Thank you, Lady Richmond.’

  He motions her back to the ballroom and when the door closes the music is muffled again. I can see only one of the men clearly, a young officer with a striking face, indigo eyes and dark ginger hair slicked back. He could be a younger incarnation of my old friend from Venice, Jerome, the bachelor adventurer who ended up being stabbed for his jewels. As the other two talk, he looks from the window, not noticing us, and for a moment he captivates me: the heat of pride within him at being in such company, his certainty that his whole life is before him. In a flash I imagine the swift pageant of it: marriage after the war, a country seat, children with his dark ginger hair, middle age, dotage.

  ‘What is this place,’ says the duke.

  ‘A coach builder’s house apparently.’

  ‘Really? Are the Richmonds so hard up?’

  Laughter. ‘They would swear they have chosen Brussels for the unrivalled hunting. The fact you can live here like a sultan for half the price of London has nothing to do with it.’ Another burst of music. ‘Richmond, there you are. The map?’ The duke takes it and unfolds it on the table. ‘You’ve heard?’

  ‘That the Prussians have retreated from Fleurus?’

  ‘Worse already. Beyond Charleroi now. Napoleon has humbugged me by God, gained twenty-four hours march. I have ordered the army to concentrate on Quatre-Bras. If we can’t stop him, we must fright him here.’

  Richmond has to put on his glasses to see where the duke is pointing. ‘Waterloo?’

  ‘We mobilize at three a.m. Make preparations, quietly. Tell only those who need to know. Why upset your wife more, when she has gone to all this effort?’

  ‘Three? It is evening still. What should we do in the meantime?’

  ‘Dance,’ says the duke, exiting, the three men going after him and taking the light with them.

  ‘Can I go back?’ Sporco’s saying, his voice strange and quiet. ‘Can I go back to meet her? The terrier in the bonnet?’

  ‘No, you stay with me. You stay here.’ I want to be soft with him, explain he’ll only be kicked again if he goes back for the walking dog, tell him he’s a good soul—but all my tenderness is stripped away. ‘Stay with me. I’m sick in my head.’ I sink to the ground. I want the music of the dance to give me solace, but I am inconsolable. Unbearable fever. Now it is I who’s a character in an opera, a tragic figure: a dog that has lived two hundred and seventeen years, through wars and revolutions, who lost his master more than a century ago, but still believes they’ll be reunited.

  ‘Sleep then, you should sleep,’ Sporco is saying, so far away.

  Everything slows down. A lady leers from the window of a sedan, a man marches with rabbits swaying from a stick. Through the ballroom windows the soldiers and ladies reel round and round and round beneath lurching chandeliers. The dance of the dead. This madness will pass, it must.

  ‘You sleep a while,’ Sporco is whispering. Poor thing, a good soul, abandoned as a puppy. Tomorrow I will mend everything with him. Tomorrow.

  13

  THE ROD OF ASCLEPIUS

  Brussels, June 1815

  Almost always the dreams I have about my master are noisy and frenetic, as crowded as the cathedral was on the day I lost him. I’m always pushing through people as he forges on, just out of sight. I might catch a glimpse of the hem of his jacket, of the heel of his boot, before my way becomes barred. I’ve dreamt of pursuing him through the banqueting hall at Saint-Germain, through tracts of embroidered silk and stockinged ankles, the chamber growing longer and darker the more panic-stricken I become, until the courtiers turn into windblown trees and the chamber is a forest on a winter’s night. I have dreamt of him in London, trying to catch up, as city people pour down to the river, walking on to frozen water to dance quadrilles. Even the dreams that take place in the countryside, shadowing the tail of armies across the land, are inexplicably busy, the sky hectic with dark birds, the route a maze of guarded walls and un-crossable ravines.

  But this dream—I’m aware, as dreamers sometimes are—is calm and still. The multitude has vanished and Brussels is silent, utterly. Even the birds, the secret armies, have abandoned the horse chestnuts and linden trees of the boulevards. I walk across the city to the building where the dance is taking place. The air is mountain pure, the grime and dirt filtered away, and the light on the buildings has a silver shine. How exquisite to find these frantic roads vacant.

  There is no dance. In my dream, the mansion is empty too. I pass up the alleyway and notice that I’m no longer a dog.
I walk on two legs, a human, boots on my feet, a staff in my hand, decorated with the figure of a serpent. I find a dog sleeping, curled up in a porch at the top of a little flight of stairs. He’s sturdy-looking, inky dark fur on his back turning to light hazel on his stomach, and he has a curling scar on his side. He’s shivering in his sleep and I wonder where his master is. I kneel and reach out my hand, my human hand...

  I wake and sit bolt upright, listening. There is clarity in my head, and all around me. It is still night, I’m in the alley and the ball carries on. The crimson of the men’s uniform and the white of the ladies’ dresses have a vivid intensity, though their dance is very strange, having lost all its structure, the men moving fast, whilst the women drift at half the speed. My fur tingles, inexplicably so. ‘What’s happened?’ I say to Sporco, but he’s not there. The alley is deserted but for me. ‘Friend?’ My voice has the clarity of a bell.

  I realize the dance is strange because, in fact, it has unravelled into chaos. Soldiers are rushing into packs, rallying one another with cries. They’ve been called to battle. I pass up the alley and on the front steps soldiers are bidding hurried goodbyes. ‘Sporco?’

  A battalion is driving up the street, on-the-march, in-step, battle-ready, bugles, horns. Then everything goes quiet, as if a cushion has come down over the city, and I notice, further up the road, aboard a troop wagon, a man with sandy-grey hair. The cart is crammed with red-tunic soldiers, but only this man, thin as porcelain, wears just a shirt under his backpack. For certain I’m hallucinating. My heart bumps in time with the drums, but when the carriage turns the corner and I see a flash of yellow on his back, my breath catches in my throat. A serpent entwined about a rod.

  ‘It is the rod of Asclepius,’ my master said to me in Vienna, sewing on the emblem when he was first preparing for the war. That version had been finely embroidered, whilst this one is painted on, almost childishly.

  It is he.

  I bark, but there’s too much noise. His cart rolls on. Follow it. No, he’s an apparition. I’d smell him. Follow him anyway. The serpent and the rod. My dream. The mere action of setting off makes me pulse with the possibility that it is my master. I freeze: Sporco. Soldiers bunch into me, push me out the way. I’m split with panic. ‘Sporco?’ Pointless to shout against this din. What was it he asked last night before I slipped into delirium? ‘Can I go back to meet her?’ The terrier in the bonnet, he’s gone to find her.

  I have time, just, to hurry to the square. No, I’ll come for him later. Madness, I’ll not find him again. But the yellow intaglio. I’ll go with the army. I halt a third time: can I be sure it was he? There are scores of doctors in a battalion, and perhaps I read the symbol wrong. Dreams and hallucinations. Go now for Sporco, and catch up with the army afterwards, my final decision. When I get to the corner where the terriers had been, I find it empty—until I notice him waiting in shadow, half leaning against the side of the building, Sporco, looking down the barrel of his nose at me.

  ‘I thought I’d lost you.’ I pant. ‘You’re safe, though.’ He stares aloofly. ‘We’re leaving. The army. Quickly now.’ Silence. His tail is a flat coil on the ground. ‘Sporco?’

  ‘I shall wait here.’ Then, tersely, ‘Will you wait too, friend?’

  ‘No—I—I must leave. With the army.’

  ‘The army.’ He dismisses the notion with a flap of his ears. ‘Armies, armies, armies. Humans.’

  ‘Sporco, I have seen my master.’

  ‘Well, go to him then. What stops you?’

  At once we’re characters in one of the mirthless plays my master used to find so ridiculous. I make sure my tone is soft and quiet. ‘Please, my friend.’

  ‘So you won’t wait with me?’

  ‘Wait? No. What for? For her, you mean? The dog in the dress?’

  There’s hate in his growl. ‘You tell me about the realms, but you don’t want me to see them.’

  ‘Sporco—’

  ‘I follow you. I wait with you.’

  ‘Sporco—’

  ‘But you won’t wait with me.’

  ‘With females, things seem like one thing, but actually—’

  ‘Fe-males. Because you know everything. All about the realms. And I know nothing.’

  ‘It’s her smell that’s all. A trick of smell.’ Now he utters a low, threatening snarl. ‘Sporco, please—’

  The yellow symbol. The wagon is getting away.

  ‘Have you had a girl?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A lady dog? A girl? Have you known one?’

  I knew many dogs when I was young, but I remember only Blaise. How do I even begin to tell him of her. ‘Yes. One. Properly.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t, never.’

  ‘That’s not true, Sporco.’

  ‘I haven’t!’ he snaps. ‘Trying is not the same as doing.’ His lips curl showing his teeth, and I’m taken aback. ‘I want it. One time. So I’ll wait until she returns. Understand, friend?’

  ‘Sporco—’

  ‘Fight me.’

  ‘No, Sporco.’

  ‘Fight me!’ He throws open his shoulders and punches his chest forward. ‘Fight me!’ He attacks, biting my neck. I rear up and we lock together, jaws gnashing, claws swiping, a savage scramble, meshed as one, as wheels sheer past behind us, horns blaring. I’m stronger. I push him back to the corner, knock his skull with the fist of my paw and bring him down, pinning him by the neck.

  ‘I’ll not fight you, Sporco, I’ll not. You’re my only friend. Are we not a pack?’

  A gulp of amazement passes down his throat and the hate in his eyes vanishes. ‘The pack?’ It’s as if a butcher had invited him in and told him to eat all he can. There’s no limit to my shame, telling him anything to make him come. My only friend? My only friend is the man I lost a hundred and twenty-seven years ago. But Sporco believes me. The finest quality of our species is its greatest failing: trust, over sense, over logic, trust over everything. ‘Of course you and I are tied together. The pack.’

  We run until we catch up with the tail of the column.

  ‘The truck there.’

  A wagon has halted, the driver tightening the harness, the back open. Sporco doesn’t hesitate to spring aboard. I waver, searching for the yellow symbol. I leap up and bundle inside, to a smack of sulphur. It’s a munitions cart with dozens of barrels of gunpowder. They always travel at the back of the army line, just in case. There’s a thump of boots, hands slam the doors shut, wrangles a chain round the handles and fastens it tight. Moments later, we’ve set off again, the caskets rumbling against each other as we shake up the road. It’s pitch, but for a single slit of light.

  ‘All fine?’ I ask Sporco.

  He lengthens his neck and glitters his eyes. ‘All fine.’

  We’re locked in a gunpowder wagon, a travelling bomb. As I catch my breath, the same doubts tumble through my mind: did I imagine the man with sandy-grey hair, the yellow symbol of Asclepius on his back? And to where are we travelling?

  To battle for sure.

  14

  BLAISE

  Oxford, 1643

  When England erupted into civil war, my master and I ended up in Oxford, at the bizarre, makeshift court of the Stuarts, in the employment of the queen, Henrietta Maria. She suffered almost constantly from toothaches and colds, according to her imagination at any rate, and liked to have doctors about her. My master was happy to provide, as it gave us the opportunity to replenish our supplies, to continue our crusade. Our duty.

  The court had taken over a medieval college of cloisters and halls close to the Cherwell River. By then, the city had already turned into a fortress town, the reek of gunpowder everywhere, behind doors, barrelled in the back of trucks, barricaded below traps, but the queen, ‘the generalissima,’ as she, or one of her circle, nicknamed her, did her best to maintain a sense of graci
ous living, dressing herself morning until night as if for a ball, rather than a time of war.

  ‘She’s as mad as a loon,’ my master whispered to me at one of her bizarre fancy-dress enactments—a miniature version of the ones she’d once mounted in London, in which she always took the starring role—even as the town shook with cannon fire. ‘No wonder the whole realm is in mutiny.’

  She’d brought her furniture with her, which didn’t quite fit into the cramped rooms of the warden’s house, and her entourage too: courtiers, dwarves, hangers-on and a whole menagerie of animals, a monkey, a parrot and half a dozen dogs. Of the dogs, they were mostly spaniels, toyish, with ink-quill tails, and none of them were friendly. One in particular, Mitte, always positioned at the starboard of her mistress’s skirts, was spiteful in the extreme. ‘The barbarian,’ she used to call me, or ‘the filthy savage.’ In fact, she was the unsanitary one, always with a dirty backside, flecks of dried faeces in the wiry hair around it, which she’d stamp, on purpose I was sure, all over the royal furniture.

  Sometimes a man came, usually at night, always with a browbeaten face, and though the entourage would drain away, leaving the queen alone with him, I would stay to observe. He smelt of church carpets and stale oil, and I thought nothing of him. They’d have a terse conversation, at the end of which she might unlock a secret drawer in her portable harpsichord, take out jewels and give them to him, reluctantly. It was when he kissed her, lips barely touching her powdered cheek, I realized he was the king, Charles, the son of James, who I’d met at Whitehall forty years before.

  It was into that strange milieu, near the end of our six-month sojourn, that Blaise came into my life. Sometimes events occur that are so significant, they act as a fulcrum, against which your life tips from one side to the other—and, without really noticing the change, you become a different creature entirely. It was spring when I was woken by the piercing howl of a female dog, from the direction of the river. I looked up at my master, but the sound hadn’t woken him.