‘Hold fast,’ a familiar voice cries and I’m half aware of rope creaking, and I ascending. ‘Hold fast!’ His voice for sure, my master’s, the depth and timbre of it. My act of desperation has called him here. ‘Hold fast.’ I turn my body as he pulls me up and free, taking me in his hands and putting me down as if I were made of china. When I see him, Vilder, I curl back my lips, growl deepening.
‘The English camp,’ he says, pointing over the valley. ‘Follow me.’
I charge, leap from my hind legs and ram the flat of my skull against his middle. As he falters, I take his leg between my teeth and bite hard, pressing my jaw through flesh to muscle. He makes no sound, does not kick or hit me, but prizes my mouth apart and lays me aside. I attack again, his arm now, tearing off a strip of skin. Still he does not cry, just prises open my jaw with effortless strength, grapples me by the chest and eases me down.
‘I know where he is, you devil.’ He jabs his fingers in the air. ‘That way. In Waterloo. There’s no time to lose.’ When still I hold my ground, he shouts, ‘Your master. Will you not come to meet him?’
17
THE CHURCH AT WATERLOO
Waterloo village, June 1815
It seems lunacy, that when I first met Vilder, and followed him across the icy Thames, I longed for his attention. Now, though in just as unearthly a place, I shadow him with contempt, at a distance, not caring if he looks round, or what he thinks of me.
Reaching the peak of the ridge I halt a moment. A burnt sun is setting, casting a tobacco-stained light against the myriad estuaries of flat dark red. In all directions acres of corpses are tide-marked against the valley, tangled up with smashed artillery, cannon wheels, upturned carts and acres of felled horses, some still twitching. Everywhere chimneys of smoke, like hot springs, lift from the cratered ground. Woods are charred leafless skeletons and every farm building in sight is broken in pieces and blackened by fire. The wind is sharp, slanting waves of drizzle against my fur.
Vilder pauses to make sure I’m still behind him and when I press on, he does too. After everything, there’s still something magnetic about him: the haughtiness that is both self-regarding and self-loathing, his density, the vanity that is so inwrought it will decay after his bones. Even the soiled splendour of his clothes pronounces him as something other, a being beyond or above our world.
We go down into the basin of the valley. Some of the soldiers who I thought dead are sleeping, propped up by kit or by corpses, or lying motionless, white eyes in smoke-black faces, gabbling to themselves. Crafty looters are already picking through the bodies, pocketing watches, spectacles, purses, tugging rings from fingers. And there are real vultures too, congregations of them massing on branches, waiting their turn.
I pass an infantryman jabbing his dagger into the knee of a dead horse, pulling hard until the cartilage rips, throwing the joint on to fire; his companions are already eating, tearing flesh from long bones and washing it down with water sucked from helmets. The meat tastes bitter, I can see from their faces, and they slit their eyes at me, wondering if I would make a tastier meal. But something in my gaze makes them turn away.
I pass the farm we visited last night. The wall of the main building has collapsed, and in the sooty cavities of the rooms inside bodies are piled three high and burnt together like molasses, reeking of ammonia, petrified mouths frozen in a yell. A man is twisted in the rubble of the blown-out courtyard: white breeches, dark red tunic with golden epaulettes. He has a hole in his chest that has snapped through his ribs, but his hair, though powdered with pieces of bone, is slick dark ginger. I’ve seen him before, in Brussels. He is the young officer, the duke’s companion, who stared from the window as I took shelter in the alley. For a moment I’d been entranced by him and the confidence he possessed his life would be successful. Now his indigo eyes are as plain as puddle water.
And Sporco. With every step I take, his single grey eye pursues me.
There’s a final wink of gold and the sun slips from view. In its place a luminous, stenching fog cloaks the land from the outer reaches in. Vilder checks on me, and carries on. I have nothing else to do but shadow him.
Once, during a campaign in Saxony, my master took me down into a coal mine. We threaded through a hole in the mountain and descended into a labyrinth of passages and caves where teams of mute workers pickaxed the shining coalface and carried away the treasure. The village we come to, in the darkness before dawn, Waterloo, reminds me of that place. Black-faced servicemen swarm in silent packs, to the endless flitting of lanterns, as cannon, and carts—of the captured and the dead—roll in and out, bottlenecking the high street. The walking wounded hobble through in a dream state, and dogs, with the pattern of their day turned upside down, watch from doorways with slow sways of their tails. ‘Is it over now, is it?’ they murmur. ‘Or shall it start again?’ Here and there, in pools of lamplight, baggy-eyed orderlies scratch reports and tally numbers.
‘They found his carriage in Genappe,’ an old man, a town resident, asides to another. ‘Napoleon’s. He’d escaped somehow, but inside was his hat, telescope and a pouch of diamonds worth a million francs. Now there’s a piece of magic.’
Vilder is waiting on the front porch of the town church. It seems, in my hallucinatory state, an absurd parody of the dream I’ve held for more than a century, of finding my master waiting for me at the doors of the cathedral in Venice. This church, with its domed roof and pale flight of steps up to its large front door, could be miniature version of it. Vilder motions for me to enter, and I am too drained to do anything but comply. I bristle when I brush by him, not looking at his face, and he does not follow me in.
Inside, is a hellish scene, a makeshift hospital, or mortuary, the injured and the dead thrown in rows in the stony gloom, moaning for help, but receiving none, whilst a mugworty sweet smoke, another muddling parallel to my dream, melds with the whiff of infected flesh and surgical preparations.
Yet I feel a clarity inside, a tingle at the root of my tail. I’m drawn towards the altar and the first tentative rays of dawn sift through the stained-glass window and jewels of colour—sapphire, lemon, violet and rose—illuminate a golden sculpture. An ancient man clutches a staff, his gaze fixed on some wonder above, a dog at his side. Every forward step, every pad of my paw is thrilling. The legs of a soldier stick out from behind the altar, muddied boots, torn breeches. Tremors, deep and unnatural, earthquake through me. I edge closer and find him asleep, his chest slowly rising and falling and a sack next to him, daubed with a yellow symbol of a snake and staff. My heartbeat quickens, doubles, then triples in speed.
For a moment I hold my breath. I wait, teasing myself with delicious pain. At last, I lower my head and inhale a minute draught of him.
I am made of light.
It is he.
I dig my nose all over his cloak, extraordinary mewls, whines and squeaks tumbling out of me, sounds I haven’t made since I was tiny, if ever. Rearing from his collar, the back of his head, the truth of his hair: tight hazel curls dusted with grey. The sight makes my jaw shiver. Then I glimpse his face, shadowed in the folds of the cloak and I am home. My limbs give way, I drop, but bounce straight up again. His face. A gaunter, sallower version, but his face—his crinkled eyes closed in sleep. I lean down and whisper. How I have longed to make this sound—
‘Valentyne. It is me.’
Silence. His eyes stay shut.
‘Valentyne.’
Suddenly there’s a stab of panic: he’s dead. No, I’m not thinking, his chest is moving. I lick his cheek and I’m shocked by the coldness of it. I put my muzzle to his mouth, his lips are bloodless, but breath passes between them. I nudge back the collar of his cloak, shocked at how emaciated he is: where his chest used to bulge from his neck, his collar bones now jut out in shiny ridges. And an unpleasant, rusty smell, foreign to him, lifts from his skin.
‘Valentyne.’
He looks at me and my heart stops. He looks, but doesn’t see me. I lick his face, wetting the spine of his nose. He just stares as if I were any dog in the world. He sits up then, wheezing with pain, carefully leaning his back against the wall, the sheer exertion making him grimace until his chest settles. ‘Valentyne?’ There is worry in my tone. I put my paw on his lap, gaping up at him, waiting for the great tide of his reaction. He pads me absent-mindedly, barely touching, like a human who doesn’t care for animals.
‘Valentyne!’ Now my bark is snappish and it makes him wince. ‘Valentyne! Valentyne! Valentyne!’
Someone calls for quiet and a soldier laughs like a madman. My master does not know me. His pupils swivel up to white, his head lolls forward, mouth dripping slobber and his body slides back to the floor. I paw him, lick him, nudge him with my nose, half-choked yowls whistling out of me. I look round, meaning to catch the attention of a doctor, but find Vilder instead.
‘Now that you have been reacquainted, let us leave this hellhole.’ He makes a move for my master, but I block his way. Vilder returns my gaze squarely. ‘He will have no help here, I assure you. He will die.’ He reaches out again, but I let out a growl. ‘I did not bring you here to fight. You have already ripped my arm to the bone. I have helped you. Now help me. We must take him from here.’ His manner is forthright and blunt and his eyes seem to ask me to trust him. They are deep wells, but still I don’t know what lies at the bottom of them, if there are entrances to other worlds, better places. Gently he moves me aside, digs his arms under my master’s body and lifts him as if he was no heavier than a bundle of brushwood. ‘Follow,’ he says, returning down the aisle.
What other choice do I have?
18
VILDER
Antwerp, June 1815
Once again I find myself in the compartment of Vilder’s carriage, in its shabby interior of ripped chartreuse silk and scratched glass, but this time beside my incognizant master, who’s laid out across the floor, joggling side to side. Vilder drives unassisted, as he had on the road from Opalheim, and I deduce he’s not returned there since, but followed in the wake of the army, as we did. He goes in impatient stops and starts, often standing on the perch and bellowing until he gets through the clog of traffic. Over and over, he finds the way barred by immovable brigades or barricades of tipped-up carriages and artillery pieces, and must double back and find another route. When at last we escape the war zone and reach an open road, he whips hard and we course north-west at speed. It’s dusk by the time we hurtle from the countryside into the rubbled slums of a port, passing through the outskirts of the city until we finally skid to a halt at the harbour. There are thickets of masts, seagulls wheeling over the estuary to the flat lands beyond, and the air is spiced with sugar cane and pepper. I know the place, the city, the docks—Antwerp—I passed through it with my master many times.
‘Not where I would have chosen to end up,’ Vilder growls, opening the cab door, ‘but we may find some semblance of civilization.’ He retrieves my master and folds him over his shoulder. ‘Out,’ he says, clicking his fingers at me. We go to one of the buildings that face the harbour: sturdy grey stone with diamond-pane windows. A sign hangs from the front pronouncing it as an inn. A youth stirs from the porch. ‘My carriage, see to it.’ The porter ogles the comatose body across his shoulder, as Vilder furrows his brow, lost in thought for a moment, before saying, ‘Is there a doctor hereabouts?’ The boy nods. ‘Call on him. Tell him it is urgent. And buy me brandy, two bottles. Here.’ He produces a coin from his coat and gives it to him. ‘Go!’
We enter the building and traipse into a gloomy parlour. There’s an empty hearth, tiled floors that are cold to the touch and a single candle stands with one miserly smoking tallow and a plain crucifix beside it. Vilder inspects it all with distaste and in the silence my master’s boots creak together. It’s still incomprehensible that he’s here with me, and that Vilder and I have been thrown together as companions. ‘Anyone?’ Vilder says in the direction of the kitchen.
A man dressed in puritan black sails through the door, the vapour of overcooked cabbage with him. ‘Ja?’ He tuts unsociably. He sees my poor master hanging over Vilder’s shoulder but makes no enquiry.
‘A room,’ Vilder deadtones and for once I’m grateful for his plainness. The innkeeper pauses, hooding his eyes at the invalid. I feel a rush of impatience, to get my master comfortable and be by his side. ‘We have come from the battleground. My friend is not wounded, but he is—he is beyond exhaustion. We have called a doctor.’ He takes a handful of coins from his pocket and leaves them on the dresser. ‘For several days in advance.’
The innkeeper hesitates before unlatching a key from his belt. ‘The door at the top. The dog can stay outside.’
‘He stays with me,’ Vilder asserts, ushering me up the stairs before the man has a chance to stop us. On the first floor he shoulders my master into the room, lays him out on the bed and studies him for a moment, pulling up his eyelids and peering inside. He’s afraid, I can smell it on him. He inspects the room, frowning at the drab walls, peeling plaster and damp patches. Apart from the old bed, there’s a lopsided table, a pair of incommodious-looking chairs and a nightstand by the door. ‘So much for civilization.’ Grimy casement windows look out on to the darkening harbour. He goes to one of them, unlatches it and, after a struggle, cracks it open.
There’s a knock on the door and the youth enters with a pair of bottles and issues in a slim gentleman in a stovepipe hat. ‘Leave them there,’ Vilder says to the boy, before turning to the doctor. ‘He is in a state of unconsciousness, my companion. I used to have some knowledge of medicine long ago, but it is all in fragments, and I cannot think clearly. Why do you stare at me as if I am some circus monstrosity? Come forward, damn you, or do you mean to escape? Good grief, this is the most inhospitable town on earth.’
I sit where the man can see me, ears up and back straight, to present a friendlier aspect. If he has come to help my master, I cannot risk losing him. A little gulp of uncertainty passes down his throat, before he takes off his hat and sets it down with his case on the trunk at the end of the bed.
‘I am Vilder. It was kind of you to come,’ my companion says in a more conciliatory tone, offering his palm.
‘Fabrègues.’ He gives Vilder a weak handshake, before putting on his spectacles and beginning his examination. He repeats everything that Vilder has already done: checking my master’s pulse, his temperature, feeling the back of his skull, beneath his jaw and round his groin, looking into his mouth, eyes and so on.
‘What precipitated this—?’
‘What?’
‘How long has he—’
‘Oh...’ He wipes sweat from his brow before uncorking one of the bottles with his teeth. ‘Some time I suppose. He suffered a loss—’ a shooting glance at me ‘—stopped eating and—’ a swig from the bottle ‘—exhaustion?’
‘A loss?’
‘Does it matter what happened in the past? It is now he is ill.’
A little battle of wills plays out between them, before Fabrègues opens up his case and takes out a box. ‘His humours are—je dois laisser ses veines respirer. How do you say, let his veins breathe?’
‘Blood let, you mean?’
‘To force an awakening. Look at his eyes, there’s nothing there, nothing at all. Les mécanismes de son cerveau, ils sont morts. He breathes, but in a way he is dead.’
‘He is not dead. Feel him.’ Vilder puts the back of his hand on Valentyne’s forehead. ‘He is tired, supremely so. He has crossed the continent, been at war.’ Pause. ‘He is supremely tired, you understand, and—and—’ He drinks. ‘Truly, is blood letting all you have? It’s medieval.’
‘No, no, no,’ Fabrègues assures him. ‘The procedure is well proven to—’
‘Get out,’ Vilder says. The doctor d
oesn’t seem to understand, so Vilder goes to the door and opens it. ‘Get out I say. It is 1815; have you no sense of enquiry? Learn something new, you parrot.’
‘Excusez moi?’
‘Out, I say, before I open your veins.’
The doctor holds up his palms, as if to say he has done all he can, before taking his case. ‘The gentleman is extremely ill. He will die,’ he pronounces and leaves.
Vilder slams the door behind him and returns to Valentyne. ‘Wake up. Do you hear me?’ He whispers, prodding him, with the same distaste as he had with Aramis. I’m not a cowardly creature, but Vilder intimidates me like no other human ever has. I have seen barbarians and murderers, particularly on the battlefield, where men lose their inhibitions for cruelty, but Vilder is distinct from the species: there are seams within him of such deranged unpredictability that even he seems powerless to temper. I wait until my master falls asleep before stealing up and curling tightly up at his side. I have longed for a hundred and twenty-seven years to be back in this sacred place, adjoined to his skull; it is beyond belief that he hovers at the very the edge of death. So dreadful is it, I recant entirely my desire yesterday to die, hoping if I grab hold of the matter of life again, my master may somehow follow my example.
Vilder becomes my master’s doctor and for the next two days follows a mechanical regimen of activities. Once in the morning and once at night he turns Valentyne from one side to the other. He attempts to spoon-feed him tepid broth brought up from the kitchen, tipping it into his mouth and holding his head up so gravity will take it down, though most of it ends up on the bedclothes. I look at my master a hundred times an hour, as if by vigilance alone, I’ll prevent him becoming sicker. He’s so emaciated I can see the grilles of his ribs. In Genoa once, he and I witnessed a band of slaves being given their freedom: helped out from a cotton ship, a chain of skeletal humans were hauled like a grotesque fishing line from the hull, flesh eviscerated from their bones, memories from their brains, without speech, or hearing, or sense of any kind. Whatever Vilder had intended by imprisoning him at Opalheim, it had broken my master utterly. He must have remembered me, for he went to Venice first, after escaping. Not finding me, and being in such a dream state, he must have been drawn back, without even realizing, to his old routine of following armies.
Tomorrow Page 23