Tomorrow

by Damian Dibben

  ‘Half an hour’s walk up the drive to the house?’ Valentyne says and I notice that all colour, and courage, has deserted his face. He takes a deep breath. ‘Do we do the right thing, my champion?’ I don’t allow him time to think, but push my snout against the gate and it opens with a whine of rust.

  Halfway down the drive, there comes a rumble behind and a cart catches up with us. We pause on the verge, expecting it to slow down, but it hurtles by, its rear laden with shrubs: orange, lemon and palm, peculiar exotics for here. No sooner have we set off again, when another one comes. Beside the driver, sits De la Mare, Vilder’s retainer, rake-thin and sombre as ever. He sees and recognizes us, but does not tell the driver to stop. In fact, the carriage picks up speed and vanishes into the chasm of pines. My master is more apprehensive than ever, but makes a clownish roll of the eyes.

  When we come out into the open, into the valley, the first thing I notice is the lake. What had been a desiccated crater is in the process of coming back to life. There’s water in it, and pockets of wetland plants, soft-rushes and lilies. Young trees, willow and bay, have been planted round the borders and a dozen or so labourers are installing more. Indeed, there are workers everywhere, the terrain from here to the palace under renovation. The last of the old formal gardens, the bygone grids of yesteryear, are being eradicated, the ground dug up here, flattened there, irrigation channels incised through it, statues erected, even a columned folly constructed on the crest of a slope.

  The palace too, the once anaemic gargantuan felled lion of a place, on whose walls the sun seemed loath to shine, is under reconstruction. There is scaffolding up the entire central tower, which once used to point at a slight angle, and the stonework is being cleaned. My master eyes the scene, more mistrustful than anything else.

  De la Mare is waiting on the front steps, standing guard it seems, and regards our arrival with apparent surprise, as if he had not just seen us on the driveway. He was always gaunt, but more so now, and greyer at the temples. ‘Monsieur?’

  My master takes a moment to gather his wits. ‘Good day, sir. Is—’

  ‘Non. Il n’est pas la. He is not here presently.’

  ‘Are you expecting him to return?’

  ‘He told me to say he is riding.’

  My master wipes the dust from his hand and glances at me, before answering, ‘He told you to say he was riding, or he is riding?’ De la Mare’s insincere smile does not crack. ‘He knows we are here then?’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘You cannot say if he knows we are here?’ De la Mare shrugs in commiseration. ‘Well, monsieur, we have come a long way. We would appreciate some refreshment at least and—’ he motions towards the entrance ‘—to sit down.’ He’s about to go in, but De la Mare bars his way.

  ‘Not there, monsieur, non. They do the ceiling. All over the house. Suivez moi, suivez moi.’ He leads us through the stables to the rear, checking every second we’re still following obediently. In the kitchen we’re fussed to a seat in the corner, given a jug and some bread and left. I would rather wait outside, than have to hold my breath against the stench of meat. There’s a band of unspeaking cooks, one moodily boning the carcass of a cow, none regarding us with respect. Only one person, an old butler who sits polishing shoes in the corner, seems to recognize my master, as the prisoner who escaped that is, not as scion of this grand estate. My master must be heir to it, at least in part, and should be treated as such. He never practises superiority, always takes humans for what they are and not what they’re worth, but he looks a little crestfallen. He doesn’t speak a word until De la Mare returns some time later, a little redder in the face than before.

  ‘My master has returned. He would like to see you—’

  ‘Good.’ Valentyne stands.

  ‘But tomorrow is better.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Il est très fatigué. He is very tired and gone to bed.’

  ‘Bed?’

  ‘Désolé. There is a good inn—’

  ‘An inn? You’ll put us in an inn?’ Some of the kitchen staff turn their heads and the butcher makes sure we see his boning knife, as if my master were some common brawler.

  ‘Or—’ De la Mare makes a pacifying gesture ‘—you may sleep the night in the east wing. The rest is, en chantier, under construction. There is an engineer from Paris, who fits a hot-air system. Chauffage.’

  He issues us quickly through the house. When we pass the door that leads along a corridor to the banqueting hall where I was imprisoned, and my master before me, Valentyne stops. From within comes the sound of banging. De la Mare pointedly shuts the door and guides us on, down narrower passageways, eventually showing us into a sparse room with windows looking out on to an obscure courtyard and little in the way of furnishings but a tipsy four-poster bed.

  After De la Mare has left, my master says, ‘To an inn he would make us go? I suppose I should have guessed—’ he blows the dust from a portrait of a flame-haired queen ‘—that he would return to his old ways.’

  * * *

  ‘He is very sorry, sir, truly,’ De la Mare explains the next morning. ‘He will be back first thing tomorrow, and will see you then. He did not want you to be woken.’

  ‘But I was not sleeping. I challenge anyone to sleep on that mattress. It must be older than this house. Is he riding again?’

  ‘Non, non—’ a colluding laugh ‘—he has gone to Stendal to choose silk for the bedrooms. He had an appointment and—well—he had to keep it.’

  ‘Silk.’ It takes a good deal for my master’s courteousness to curdle, but when it does, his fingers heat up. De la Mare’s smile is more embarrassed now than insincere. ‘Tell me the moment he returns. Do you hear me? The moment.’

  ‘Oui, oui, bien sûr, bien sûr. I shall pay a visit this afternoon and make sure you are comfortable.’

  De la Mare does not return in the afternoon, or the evening, though two footmen come to change the mattress, and another to light the fire, which gives off barely any heat, but a good deal of smoke. Extravagant meals are brought—which Valentyne is too agitated to eat—and, bizarrely, a platter of exotic fruits. Valentyne picks up a pineapple by its neck. ‘Who on earth does he think he is?’

  In bed, he tosses and turns for hours, unable to sleep, turning his ear to any murmur from the stables, until he finally loses patience, springs up and throws on his clothes. ‘This is absurd. I will see the house at least.’

  I go with him, returning to the main section. There are ladders here and there and tables of paints where frescoes are being restored. We take a candle from a sideboard and go into the chapel. As my master studies the tombs, his breathing changes, growing heavy and slow. The kneeling couple are fenced behind a rail: the man stern and lean, the lady beneath outstretched veils. And Aramis is there too: the soldier who still looks like a boy, standing with one foot out and swagger stick poised in the air.

  We ascend the principal staircase to the apartments on the first floor and he halts at the largest of the doors. He passes his hand down the length of a keyhole, which is as wide as his hand, and he hesitates a moment before pushing against it, the gargantuan slab of oak turning into the room. He enters cautiously. Dawn light sifts through three arched windows. On the back wall there’s a discoloured rectangle, where the back canopy of a bed must once have hung, a state bed. Valentyne stares at the absence of it and is lost in thought.

  Going back to the landing, he notices light coming from under a door. He creeps up, puts his ear to it and there’s a faint rustle within. ‘Vilder?’ There’s no reply, just the creaking of the house. ‘Vilder, are you there?’ At once he snatches the handle, but it’s locked. His brother is inside for certain, and close to us: I can smell him. But there’s no answer.

  * * *

  ‘I wish to depart immediately, but I’m told there are no horses. That there is no one even to co
nvey us back to the turnpike.’ My master had waited until after lunch the following day, before collaring De la Mare in the hall.

  ‘Regrettably, you cannot leave, monsieur—’

  ‘I can and I will! Has he not committed crimes enough? And you too are part of the conspiracy. Does he not consider it gracious of me to come in the first place?’ There comes a clamour from the banqueting hall, of something falling. De la Mare flicks his eyes towards it. ‘Is he there? Is that where he is?’ Valentyne flies off, but De la Mare blocks him.

  ‘Monsieur, you cannot—’

  My master pushes him aside and races down the corridor into the room just as a shutter closes it to pitch black. There are the sound of discordant pants, of someone beetling away. The air is no longer trapped and mouldy as it was, but clean with the scent of beeswax and lacquer.

  ‘Damn you, Vilder, damn you.’

  Just panting in the darkness.

  My master throws open the shutters one at a time until light and colour flood the room. I notice the floor first. It had been nothing but cracked tiles when we were imprisoned, but is now a playing field of glossy white marble shining back the colours of the room: lazurite, green earth, yellow lake, light red, vermilion, peach black, cadmium, ultramarine and purple ochre. Looking up, it’s as if the air itself has transfigured into living washes of pigment, before I realize it’s the paintings that glow, hundreds of them tiered up to the ceiling. They are the pictures Valentyne etched in the years of his captivity, and many more besides, finished and mounted in frames.

  ‘W-what is this?’ my master stammers.

  ‘I took some liberties and coloured them in,’ Vilder says from the shadows. He’s pinned in the alcove of the farthest door. ‘And cleaned up my paintings from our younger days.’ He reaches out his arm, motioning towards a group of large canvases. ‘What is this, you ask? It’s your life, Valentyne, and Tomorrow’s too. And a little of mine, for what it is worth. This is your house too, Valentyne. It was left to us both after all.’

  My master stares at Vilder in the corner. He makes no reply, but turns and looks at the paintings. In one, he and Vilder are on horseback, facing forward, a sun-bleached vista behind them, a silver river twisting between a mountain of ruins, temples and palazzos. Squinting against the Mediterranean sun, comrades in arms, heads high and brows steady, they’re young pioneers. In the adjacent painting, against a backdrop of tundra, they’re wide-eyed, red-cheeked, belted into furs, a sleigh and pack of dogs ready to take them to the ice mountains in the distance. There’s a canvas of Venice, Valentyne and Vilder on a terrace over the Grand Canal, side by side again, whilst at their rear the Rialto Bridge lays only half constructed. The brothers are painted—sometimes alone, sometimes together—examining maps in palace chambers, at desks with quills in hand, in closets being fitted into clothes, at royal assemblies, pageants and funerals.

  ‘It will not work,’ Valentyne says eventually. ‘This spectacle you’ve arranged. It’s not enough. I’ll not forgive.’

  ‘Nor should you.’

  My master peers at him in the shadows. There’s something indefinably strange and diminished about Vilder: not just his voice, his mass. ‘My mind has not changed. You could fill fifty rooms with paintings and—it wouldn’t be enough.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I came here to see the house, not you. To pay respect to our mother. I have not visited her in two and a half centuries even though I was locked just yards from where she rested. Nor our father either, whatever we thought of him. I came to pay my respects. You always complained that I was a wanderer, that I never took an interest in the place. You found it ridiculous that I’d rather be someone’s guest than enjoy a share of my own domain—even though I had every right to make that choice. Well, now I’m here. But I meant what I said, our association is finished.’

  ‘Quite. And soon I will depart and leave you here in peace.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. The house is yours. I have no need for it. Heavens above is this a game of hide-and-seek? Come out from there.’

  When Vilder steps into the light, trying to keep upright, Valentyne double takes, and I too. He’s older, alarmingly so. He picks up the fallen set of ladders and holds on to them with studied dignity. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ my master asks almost accusingly.

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Your colour. You look—’

  Vilder chuckles. ‘Are we not as old as the wind?’ His laugh turns to a cough and it takes several rasps to clear his throat. My master stares at him for a long time, and an entire drama seems to play in the spheres of his eyes until Vilder crouches down to stroke my head. ‘It is good to see you, sir. You are welcome.’ Close up, an uncommon variety of rot emanates from his insides. His salts and minerals are out of kilter, his blood muddied with urea and other waste. The three of us remain there soundlessly.

  ‘It is fine what you’ve done,’ says Valentyne. ‘With this room.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And the gardens too. Very fine. I have not seen water in that lake since—’

  ‘Ancient times. The river had stolen away below the mountain. We had a job to lure it back. Grand notions. But a start has been made at least.’

  ‘Why are you so thin?’

  Vilder considers his reply. ‘Because I was too fat before?’

  Valentyne sizes up his brother. ‘You are not forgiven.’

  * * *

  Before sunset we take blankets, a picnic of food and build a fire in a cradle of rocks by the lake. My master continues to be silent, but after some cups of wine the brittleness begins to crack. They talk about nothing in particular. For a long while the sun seems to hover over the horizon, not wanting to set, intrigued it seems by how things will turn out for these two unusual humans by a lake.

  ‘You should paint again?’ my master says. ‘I’d forgotten your talent. You were better than I at everything.’

  ‘Except dedication. Of that, I had not one iota.’

  ‘What about your admirers at the Castello Roganzuolo? Sei un dio quando dipingi, he said. You are a god when you paint.’

  ‘Titian? He was drunk when he said that. Or in want of a love potion.’

  ‘Not he, not Titian. Barbarelli.’

  ‘Giorgione.’ Vilder claps his hand to his chest. ‘A maestro. Thirty-two when he died? The waste of it. Masaccio the same. Marvels we’ll never know.’

  Apart from the fact my master is slightly taller than his sibling, naturally leaner, his hair still thick and he a couple of years younger—whatever that means when you’re their age—there are so many subtle similarities between them, I wonder how I never saw them. The cadence of their voices, the quickness of their eyes, the way their hands pause before their mouths as they consider things. They communicate—like brothers do—unmannered, with little need for eye contact, often silent. I study Vilder as he goes on to some other story of long ago, but I block out his voice, concentrating only on the movement of his mouth.

  In the hall, on our way back into the house, Vilder starts to cough again, and in his effort to stifle it, it worsens to a fit, his neck reddens and the veins below his eyes turn dark blue. He fumbles to the table and sits, clearing his throat over and over in hacking rasps. Wet dots of blood sprinkle on the wood. The noise draws De la Mare, night-shirted, to the top of the stairs, but he stops when he sees Vilder’s not alone. When his convulsion has passed, Vilder takes a handkerchief and dabs his mouth with jokey gentility.

  ‘I’ll be patient no longer,’ says Valentyne. ‘I insist you tell me what ails you?’

  ‘I have told you. Age. Brother, we were born in the same decade as Joan of Arc.’

  Valentyne is not amused. He stands over his brother, until the other’s smile drops away. Vilder reaches into his pocket and places a shrivelled black stone on the table. I know it immediately, but Valentyne is nonplussed. ‘It saved you,
I think, and for that I am grateful. Eternally.’ He hitches up his shirt to show the scar at the side of his stomach, not the neat curlicue he once had, but a ragged and livid disfigurement. ‘Antwerp. Your revival. And my undoing. Do you see now?’ And he neatens his shirt down again.

  It takes some moments for my master to understand, but when he does he too must sit. In the silence there’s just the wheeze of Vilder’s breath. ‘But—’ my master begins and stops. ‘Why don’t you repair it?’

  ‘Repair?’

  ‘Begin again.’

  A guffaw. ‘Begin again?’

  ‘Conversion immediately. I have jyhr with me, a small quantity I manufactured in London—’

  He’s about to rush off, but Vilder holds him fast. ‘Sssh,’ he says quietly as if talking to a child. ‘You do not understand. I said it was my undoing. And my undoing is what I desire. “A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once.”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” Julius Caesar says it on the day of his undoing, according to Shakespeare at any rate.’

  ‘I know who says it. What do you mean by it?’

  ‘Come now, don’t pretend to be obtuse. You are the valiant Valentyne, that Caesar speaks of, and I the coward. For I have died an infinite number of times, in a litany of ways. I have died every day. And the disgrace of it is unendurable. I would like to have—no, I rephrase—I shall have, a more permanent solution.’

  ‘You mean—?’

  A shrug, a smile. ‘Would it be so bad?’

  ‘To die?’

  Vilder tries to lift his brother’s mouth into a smile with his thumb and forefinger, but my master shakes him off. He’s forlorn for a moment, then resolution returns. ‘No. No. I forbid it. It is the insanity of the—I shall fetch my things.’ He rushes off.

  Vilder and I go together and stand in the bedroom doorway watching as Valentyne tips his things across the floor, snapping up bottles to read the labels, but unable to make out anything in the dark. ‘I forgive you, you are forgiven. There. If that’s what you want me to say. Why must you continue to taunt me?’ A capsule rolls under the bed and he has to crawl under to fetch it.