The Silent Boy

by Taylor, Andrew

  ‘I am much obliged, sir.’

  ‘Then I will leave word with them. And with Jarsdel. They will do whatever you require. If you wish it, they will have your bags brought over from the Swan With Two Necks, and pay your bill there.’ Malbourne was studying him with pale, clear eyes. ‘Forgive me, sir, but you look fatigued. Wherever you go, I hope you find a good dinner and a good night’s sleep.’

  Is a home to a house what a soul is to a body?

  Savill stared at the shuttered façade of his house in Nightingale Lane. From where he stood on the corner, he could see the tops of the tall chimneys of the kitchen and bakehouse. There was no trace of smoke. He had looked forward to this moment since he left London – the first sight of his own house; the foreknowledge of the welcome that awaited him within.

  Without people inside it, though, the place was as forlorn as a corpse. He chided himself for his folly – he had known the house would be empty; it was irrational to feel melancholy to see proof of it with his own eyes. Yet his sensibilities obstinately refused to behave in a rational manner.

  Savill decided against calling on Mrs Forster, the servant who acted as a caretaker when the family was away, though this would have been courteous and perhaps sensible as well. Once, however, Mrs Forster had been a housekeeper for a lawyer in Lincoln’s Inn and with old age she had become garrulous about the glories and curiosities of her previous position – and, indeed, about any other subject under the sun that took her fancy, so long as it related to herself.

  Mrs Forster was a good woman and wholly trustworthy; and Savill’s sister depended on her for assistance with the management of the house; but it was almost impossible to stop her talking once she had begun. She was deaf, as well, and when she and Savill’s sister talked together, their conversation was audible all over the house.

  She did not live with them, a circumstance that Savill considered a merciful blessing from almighty God, but lodged in the smallest of the houses in the lane with her niece, an altogether unfortunate young person who was in fact widely believed to be her natural daughter by her previous employer.

  That was the reason why Savill had entered Nightingale Lane not by the wider entrance where it passed directly in front of her parlour window, but by the footpath that communicated with one of the new roads north of Bedford Square.

  He took a key from his pocket and unlocked a low door set in the wall by the side of the house. The door opened into the kitchen yard. To the left was the house; directly opposite him, and attached to the house, was the lower roofline of the stable and the loft above. Through an archway on his right was his garden and, beyond it, the trees of his orchard.

  Savill passed into the house by the door to the scullery, whose key was concealed under a stone in the yard. The air inside was cool and damp, for none of the fires had been lit for days. The kitchen table was bare and newly scrubbed. The walls were thick. The only sound was the ticking of the clock in the hall.

  The shutters covered the principal windows of the larger rooms, but enough light filtered through the cracks for him to be able to find his way. He looked into the downstairs apartments, knowing they were empty but driven by a desire to see them again. He went upstairs and found a clean shirt in the press in his own chamber.

  He left to last the room where he transacted business and sat reading when he wished only for his own company. His sister referred to it with a certain pride as the bookroom.

  On the table he found a pile of letters waiting for him – three bills, and a line from his tailor to say that the Sunday coat he had ordered was ready for him to try on at his convenience.

  There was also a letter from his daughter. He tore it open and held it to the light from the window.

  Dearest Papa,

  I shall be Mortified if you bring my Brother home while I am at Mrs Pycroft’s with Mary. Pray call on us with him as soon as ever you may. I have a Particular Favour to ask. May I not come Home and Keep house for you, even before my Aunt returns? I do so wish to meet Charles, and to see you of course, and Mary will get along very Well with her Sewing without Me. You have been Gone such an Age.

  Your Loving Daughter,

  E. Savill

  But there was nothing from Mr Rampton.

  The afternoon was well advanced by the time Savill came up the drive to Vardells. The weather had improved during his ride from town, though now it was growing colder. The long windows of the new library reflected watery sunlight, more silver than gold. The sky was a very pale blue and partly veiled with high lace-like clouds.

  At the house they said that Mr Rampton had sent word he would not come down yesterday and probably not today, either. It left Savill with no alternative but to ride back with the sour knowledge that this had been a wasted day.

  Near the lodge, he stopped and took from his pocket the brass telescope that Dr Gohlis had found in the woods. The house was visible from here and he focused the glass on it. It was a well-made thing and the image was so sharp that the wall of the house seemed near enough to touch.

  There was no trace of the swallows that had so irritated Mr Rampton. By this time of year, they would have departed, or hidden themselves away in the mysterious place where they spent the winters. Aristotle, Savill had read, believed that swallows, swifts and martins huddled together in groups, wrapped themselves in balls of mud and lay, snug and dry, at the bottom of ponds until spring. He did not think it likely himself, for surely someone would have found a ball of them by now. He hoped Charles was warm, wherever he was, for winter was coming.

  The grounds were studded with young trees that would flourish as mature specimens in a hundred years’ time. It occurred to Savill that Vardells, like Norbury Park, had been built for a posterity that did not exist: that Mr Rampton, like the late Mr West, was building a dream, not a country house. A dream that needed Charles to make it real.

  Chapter Forty

  Waking and dozing, thinking and dreaming, Charles hears the sound all night long. Tip-tap. Tell no one. Tell no one that the black sky will soon rain blood.

  On the other side of the cupboard door, the man in the blue coat is restless. He paces up and down, the floorboards creaking. Once he stumbles. A chair falls over and so, perhaps, does he, for he swears and stamps and then weeps. He also breaks a glass.

  Later still, when the man has been snoring for some time, Charles rises to his feet very slowly and, with the blanket draped around his shoulders, he listens at the door. The regular rhythm of the breathing does not change.

  Tip-tap. If it were not for that, the scales of fear would be equally balanced. To stay or to try to escape. At least there is no longer room for doubt. Not now.

  Holding his breath, Charles pushes the wire in the lock and pulls the door away from it, while nudging the door outward with a gentle pressure from his knee. With a scrape that assaults the ears, the door swings away from him.

  The snoring stops. Charles holds his breath. The rustle of the river filters into the silence. The room is very nearly dark. The window overlooking the garden is uncurtained. The sky beyond the glass is grey, though the trees of the garden are nothing but jagged black shadows.

  The man sighs. His breathing resumes and so, in a moment, does his snoring, though now it is a more delicate and melodious sound than before, with an extra whistle at the very end of each in-breath.

  Charles picks up his shoes and, still with the blanket around him, takes a step into the room. Then another. This brings him within reach of the table. His fingertips dance over the scarred surface. He feels the outline of a small piece of cheese. He puts it in the pocket of his breeches.

  His eyes adjust to what light there is. The man in the blue coat sprawls on his blankets in the corner, with his head on the velvet cushion. Step by step, Charles edges towards the door beside the window. It is impossible to do this silently, no matter how hard he tries. The warped timbers of the boathouse are in league with his enemies. They groan and squeak like malevolent animals underneath
the floor.

  All this time, the snoring does not stop. At last Charles touches the door. He runs his hand over it until he finds the lock. The key is not there. He almost stamps with vexation. The key could be anywhere – on the table, on the floor or – worst of all – in the pocket of the man in the blue coat. The room is too dark to see anything clearly.

  Perhaps this door is warped, as the cupboard door was. Charles lifts the heavy latch and tugs it away from the jamb beside it. With a sigh, the door swings into him with such force that he almost falls backwards into the room. It stops abruptly when the bottom of it catches a slightly raised board in the uneven floor.

  There is a gap between door and jamb of about a foot. Charles slips through it and pulls the door shut. It is only then that his brain catches up with his reflexes, and he understands what has happened: the man in the blue coat has forgotten to lock the door.

  The day is beginning. The ruined garden is silvered with dew. Charles descends the steps and turns to his right. The great grey river runs past the bottom of the garden. The further bank is a dark blur, apart from a handful of lights from early risers.

  A wooden jetty runs alongside the boathouse and projects a few yards into the water. The door to the lower part of the boathouse stands ajar. Charles looks inside. The dinghy rocks at its moorings, audible as much as visible. He glances up at the ceiling, at the wooden planks that form the floor of the room above. The snores drift down and mingle with the heave and slap of the water.

  For a moment he entertains a wild idea that he will sail away downstream until the river takes him out to sea: the gentle wind will guide him to a desert island where he may live in peace as a hermit and never see blood again or hear the sounds of cracking walnuts. But the practicalities of such a voyage are overwhelming. Besides, the river is a cold, grim thing and he does not want to trust himself to it.

  But the dinghy?

  He unties the painter. Hand over hand, he eases the boat along the jetty and pushes it into the river. The current catches it. It turns full circle in the water and slides away from the bank. It moves downstream. A mist is hanging on the water and soon it is out of sight.

  Find the island, he thinks, find the island. If nothing else it will make the man in the blue coat think that Charles has escaped by the river.

  Seagulls cry. He walks away from the water. A dog barks in the distance.

  On the landward side, the boathouse is masked by the overgrown trees and bushes. Even the gravelled path is thick with tall weeds, drenched with moisture. But someone has beaten down a path of sorts among them.

  The further Charles walks from the river, the clearer the path comes and more light pours into the world. The silhouette of a house appears, its chimneys and roofs sharp against the brightening sky. He veers away from it and draws the blanket over his head like a shawl.

  A wall looms. It is built of brick and is at least six feet high. A fox appears and darts away, seeming to evaporate in the air before Charles’s very eyes.

  The reason is that the upper part of the wall has collapsed, leaving a gap a yard wide. It offers an easy jump for a fox and an easy scramble for a boy.

  Beyond the wall is a meadow. Charles has a crushing sense of the world’s immensity, of his own insignificance. He wishes himself back among the half-known terrors of the boathouse.

  Only a moment.

  Weeping, he staggers across the uneven grass. A dark shadow stands in his way. It is the size and shape of a cottage. He is almost within touching distance before he realizes it is a laden haywain sheeted with canvas, not a house.

  The tears are cold on his cheeks. There is a pain in his belly. Weariness weighs him down.

  It seems the most natural thing in the world to scramble into the belly of the wain and to wriggle higher and deeper into the loose, sweet-smelling and slightly damp hay. Covering himself with the blanket, Charles cries himself to sleep.

  At first he is at sea, going to his island. The ship is swaying from side to side. The rigging creaks and groans. A strange rumbling sends vibrations through the timbers.

  The sailors are talking among themselves.

  ‘Say what you like,’ says one, ‘it’s not right.’

  ‘Only day that’s left,’ says another.

  ‘But it’s Sunday.’

  ‘No Sabbaths on a farm. You know that.’

  ‘They’ll have to stack it themselves.’

  ‘What’s that to us, Dick? Besides, horses don’t care what day of the week it is. Got to eat, don’t they, even on Sundays, same as us.’

  So Charles learns that he is not on a boat, not at sea. He is still embedded in hay and he is thirsty. On the other hand, he is warm and surprisingly comfortable. He feels happier – or at least less unhappy, less fearful – than he has since leaving Charnwood on the terrible morning when Louis was revealed as a false friend.

  The wain moves very slowly along a road. The voices of the two men are different from the peasants’ voices in Somersetshire, sharper and harder and faster. He makes a peephole in the straw but all he sees are muddy fields.

  Charles eats the cheese, which is salty and makes him thirstier. He licks and then sucks some of the damper pieces of hay. After a while he dozes, lulled by the grinding of the great wheels and the rising and fall of the voices. He has no idea where the men are taking him. He does not care.

  Hours drift between waking and sleeping in the sweet-smelling new-mown grass. Charles sucks hay and dreams.

  At length he becomes aware that there is a change in the sounds that envelop him. The heavy iron clatter of the wheels is still there, and so too are the voices of the men. But around them and beyond them is a deep, rolling roar like a waterfall. People are shouting, too, and once he hears a child scream.

  Charles burrows to the side of the load and makes a peephole in the hay. The air is so foul that he retches. He sees the first-floor windows of houses passing slowly by, and then two men on horseback. A woman in black sweeps a doorstep. They have come to a town, perhaps London itself.

  The more deeply they penetrate the city, the more slowly the haywain goes; the more halts there are; and the more the realization grows on Charles that he must not stay here until the wagon reaches its destination. They will unload the hay and he cannot fail to be discovered.

  He negotiates his way to the back. The sides of the wain splay out from the bed on which the hay rests. They are formed of vertical planks with spaces for the air between them. But the spaces are too narrow for Charles to squeeze through. He struggles up to the rail that connects the planks at the top. He misjudges the speed of his ascent, and his head pokes out in plain sight, just above the rail.

  Directly in front of him is a cart drawn by a skinny pony. An old man is sitting in the cart, a pipe clenched between his teeth and a hat drawn over his eyes. But the reins are held by the boy who sits beside him.

  In the same instant, the boy sees Charles and Charles sees the boy. The boy sticks out his tongue and wrinkles his nose. Before he can prevent himself, Charles does likewise. The boy grins. Charles grins.

  The wain comes to a halt again. So does the cart. Somewhere ahead, drivers are arguing and growing angry. Charles clambers up and rolls over the rail.

  He lands heavily on cobbles smeared with horse droppings. The impact drives the air from his lungs. He scrambles up. The boy on the cart is craning over to watch him. He pokes out his tongue at Charles. He puts his thumbs to his ears and he wiggles his fingers.

  ‘Yah …’ he says.

  The traffic begins to move again.

  Charles runs through the streets. It is Sunday, late afternoon, shading into early evening. Despite the holiness of the day, streams of people pass up and down the streets and the roadways are crowded with vehicles. Though some establishments are closed, there are many shoppers about. The air smells of sewage and smoke.

  Already lamps and candles glow inside some of the shops. Instinct keeps him to the busier thoroughfares. Dangers lurk in
dark, unfrequented places, not among crowds.

  He steals a roll from a stall in a poorly lit doorway and runs on, his heart hammering with fear. The roll is stale but it tastes wonderful: ‘Quite divine,’ Maman would say when she was served a dish she liked, for she had an appetite for food and a keen appreciation of it. ‘Fit for the gods.’

  Afterwards, he wanders on. A sign in the window of a shirtmaker’s reads: THE FINEST LINEN IN LONDON. AS PATRONIZED BY THE NOBILITY AND GENTRY. PRAY WALK IN AND INSPECT OUR MANY TESTIMONIALS. So at least he can be sure he is in London.

  The food has steadied him. Charles knows that he cannot walk the streets for ever, that he must find shelter. He cannot ask a stranger for help, for who would listen to a boy who cannot speak?

  His mysterious uncle Rampton must live in London but he has no idea where. So does Mr Savill, who lives in a place called Nightingale Lane, with his daughter, Lizzie, the girl who once looked like Charles himself.

  Lizzie, Charles thinks, my sister.

  All at once, she seems the obvious solution to his difficulty. She is grown up now. She will protect him. He does not have to stay with her if he does not like her. She will do for now, at least until Mr Savill returns.

  Nightingale Lane is on the northern edge of the city. That is what Mr Savill said. It is near a place where they are building new houses for rich people. There is an alehouse called the Royal Oak nearby. Nightingale Lane and the Royal Oak belong in the country, and the new houses belong in the city. There is a walnut tree in Mr Savill’s garden.

  Tip-tap. Cracking a walnut. A walnut tree. What does the coincidence mean?

  Charles is passing a churchyard crowded with memorials, some broken, others at drunken angles. The tower attached to the church is crumbling and a wooden paling has been erected around it.