Silent

by David Mellon

  “But no one’s declared war yet, have they?” asked George.

  “Not as far as I know,” said Uncle Henri. “But the Germans, and, honestly, everyone else has been talking about it for years.”

  They came to some stairs.

  “Is anybody else hungry?” said George. “I’m starving.”

  “Didn’t you just eat?” said Thomas.

  “I guess. I was kind of distracted.”

  “All right. I’ll get the drink for Henri,” said Thomas. “But quit it with the garlic. No one wants all that garlic in an omelet.”

  George looked to Adi. “You didn’t eat much at dinner. And I threw away your dessert.”

  Adi shook her head no, then realized she was hungry. Ravenous, really.

  She made a sign with her fingers, a circle and then a cracking motion.

  “Good. How do you want them?” George said. “Scrambled? Poached? Henri. How ’bout you?”

  They went down the stairs until they came to the kitchen and passed through what must have been an acre of stoves, pitch-black, cast-iron, under a low ceiling.

  • • •

  While George cooked, Uncle Henri carried on with his discourse, stopping only to take a nip from his cognac. (Adi had hardly been able to look at the bottle.) He’d sat himself down upon one of the stoves, indifferent to the soot on his trousers.

  “So you see, young lady, the reason that this business with the archduke is so bad is that because of all the trouble they’ve been having for the last few years in the south of their empire, Austria is looking for any excuse to go down there and regain control.”

  George handed her a piece of red pepper. “And the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne is a pretty good excuse.”

  “So.” Uncle Henri held his palms out. “In this hand, you’ve got Austria, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. Maybe Bulgaria. Who knows what Italy will do. Right? In the other hand, you have Russia and France and the British and us, of course. They all”—he made fists with both hands—“have treaties with one another. If Austria declares war with Serbia, everyone will line up on one side or another.” He slammed his fists together. “Bam!”

  Adi loved this, though she knew terribly little about European politics and history. She remembered when her father used to say “Politics is not a fitting subject for women to discuss.” Which made Mother laugh, seeing as she was the one who had taught him everything he knew of Indian politics.

  Henri let out a heavy sigh. “The irony, as George was saying, is that the monarchs of all these countries are related—every one! First cousins, most of them.” He nodded to their “chef.” “Georgie here as well.” George flipped an omelet and grinned.

  “But why won’t that keep them from fighting?” asked Thomas.

  Henri took Adi’s hand and gave it a kiss and hopped down from the stove.

  “Well, that was the idea, marrying all these families together.” He swatted at the soot on his pants. “Unfortunately, these days the generals are in charge. They don’t care that Queen Victoria was everyone’s grandmother.”

  Uncle Henri took a sip from his glass and shook his head as if, in the saying of it, these things had become all too real to him. With a little bow to Adi, Henri said, “Now, my dear, that’s enough of doom and gloom.” She smiled and bowed in reply.

  George slid the last omelet onto a plate.

  • • •

  They took their late supper at a long, well-worn table off the kitchen, joining several of the scullery crew. One of them offered to get George a glass of whatever dark ale they were having. George leaned his face against his hand and smiled. “Another time, lads.” He took a bite of his eggs and looked at Uncle Henri. “So, what is going to happen?”

  Uncle Henri shrugged. “I’d like to say everyone is going to sit down and work out their differences like adults, but you may have noticed there are precious few of them about. However, I’m betting you and I and a few others are going to need to be off to Paris—tomorrow, next day at the latest.”

  Adi was sleepy but not so much that she missed this. She looked to George. He was studying his plate.

  “We have one too, don’t we, Henri? A treaty, I mean.”

  “That’s right, Georgie,” he said with little enthusiasm. “Made by your father, with France, when he wasn’t all that much older than you are now.” Henri nodded to Adi, not noticing the look of alarm in her eyes. “Not that anyone much cares what we do, we are but a flyspeck on the map. Unfortunately, we’re a flyspeck just south of Alsace and Lorraine—two territories the French lost to Germany in 1871. The French want them back very badly.”

  George looked over to Adi. She was trying to be brave, trying not to look as if she thought her problems were comparable to a European war.

  But they were—to her.

  Somewhere out there, who knows where, the boys were counting on her.

  She clutched her watch tightly to her mouth. It was all she could do not to scream and yell. She should be doing something! Anything!

  Pushing away from the table, wiping tears from her face, she ran through the kitchen and up the stairs. These ridiculous shoes! She kicked them off. Down the corridor she went, until she found a door leading out into a garden and an orchard beside the house.

  She ran through the trees. The moon had long set; the only light was from the fireflies that had come out in force. The leaves and branches whipped past her, until the cool grass and the night air began to calm her.

  Coming to the high wall at the edge of the trees, she put out her hands to touch the moss-covered stone. Leaning her forehead against the wall, she heard steps through the grass behind her, slowing to a walk.

  George stood for a moment and then came over and leaned a shoulder against the wall next to her.

  Adi studied him in the faint light. He lifted his glasses up and brushed the hair out of his eyes. They stood quiet, listening to a cricket fiddle its tune. George reached out his hand and pulled at a loose curl along the side of Adi’s neck.

  “Bad timing,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure what timing he was talking about. Meeting each other when she couldn’t speak? A war starting when she was trying to find her brothers? It didn’t really matter. It was all pretty terrible.

  She was about to start crying again, though she really didn’t want to. George leaned in—Adi saw fireflies reflected in his glasses. He kissed her lightly on the lips, once, and again.

  For just a second it all stopped, there was peace and silence, there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, no riddle, no war, no tomorrow.

  They looked at each other a few inches apart, sharing the same atoms of air. He was about to kiss her again when they heard Thomas calling through the trees. She put her hand against his chest.

  George took her by the hand. They walked back through the apple trees to the house.

  Chapter 16

  Adi took one more look at the map of France and slammed the atlas shut on the library table. Tiny flecks of dust from the old book drifted up into the last beams of afternoon sunlight.

  Damn. Damn.

  She’d been sitting here by herself since George left, with nothing to show for it. She tried to concentrate on the riddles but managed only to fall into daydreams of gardens and driving fast through the countryside.

  What a fool she was. Thinking that she was anything but an evening’s amusement to this young man. Had she forgotten all of Tillie’s advice? She could only imagine what her grandmother would say if she could see.

  But no matter how forcefully Adi upbraided herself, she went right back to thinking of the night before, her fingers brushing against the moss on the orchard wall.

  • • •

  When she came down from her room that morning, everything was different.

  George and three of his uncles were leaving on the 2:30 train to Paris. They were to meet the following morning with the French and Belgium prime ministers.

  The household was buzzing
with activity, packing and preparation everywhere she looked. It took her a while to even find George amidst the trunks and paraphernalia.

  Something had shifted. What had been delightful and easy between them was now awkward. Nothing was said about the night before. Adi, of course, couldn’t say anything anyway, and most everything that George said seemed nervous and nonsensical. There were a million things to do and endless questions to be answered, so any opportunity to recover kept getting interrupted by details.

  And then, all of a sudden, it was time for him to leave.

  Adi watched as George and his uncles—Henri, Michel, and Andre—said their goodbyes to the family.

  What had she been thinking? When did she ever get so cheeky? Kissing a man! A man she had met the day before. To whom she had not even been properly introduced. Adi buried her head in the curtains.

  Truth was, she knew little about what real people did, and nothing at all about men. She’d certainly never kissed one before now. Most of her life had been spent in that little house with Gita and Amrit, Indian women from rural villages. Neither ever married. And they were old.

  At the British Raj school she’d attended, there were only girls; and being half Indian meant that Adi was left out of the important conversations. There was little for her to go on but the plots and characters of the Victorian novels left her by Tillie. The woman had done her best to fill Adi’s head with the notion that the made-up men in those books were the only ones worth bothering about.

  • • •

  They were all there, gathered on the front drive, George’s stepmother and Halick in the fore.

  The duchess made a dramatic show of delivering a toast, something about “a farewell to our gallant warriors.” Halick leaned up against the railing on the stairs and looked blank, except for the times when he would glance over in the direction of Adi’s balcony, as if he guessed she was behind the drapes.

  They were all toasting now, raising their glasses. Adi could see George, surrounded by everyone, looking through the crowd for her.

  At least, that’s what she imagined he was doing.

  How could she go out now? Everyone would be looking at her, expecting . . . something.

  She shook with exasperation. Yes! Everyone will look. Is that worse than being this much of a coward?

  There was a knock on her door. She was considering whether to burrow further into the drapes when the door opened. It was Thomas.

  She could tell he had taken in the situation with a glance, the blush in her cheeks telling him all he needed to know.

  He inclined his head to the doorway, to inquire with his eyes what she wished to do. It was a language Adi was becoming familiar with. She looked at him imploringly. He crossed the room and leaned in to take a discreet look through the curtains, down at the people on the drive.

  “If we go now,” he said, “we could make it before they leave.” Adi just stared and clung to the curtain.

  It occurred to her that he’d said “before they leave.” Not Thomas? She pointed to him questioningly. He continued to study the crowd.

  “I’m remaining at the house,” was all he said.

  They could hear the duchess calling, “You’re going to miss your train!”

  It was too late. George took one last look at the house and then climbed into the back of one of the cars with Henri. Off they went, the gentlemen, with their valets. All except for Thomas.

  • • •

  She tried to stay clear of her preposterously comfortable bed. The library was a better place to work, but it, of course, contained within it a matchless collection of British authors—just the kind with which she most loved to soothe herself. Before she knew it, she was halfway through Little Dorrit, every chapter of wasted time weighing on her conscience like a brick.

  She took to wandering about the house and the grounds, hoping that movement might help her focus. Or that she might see someone—George or perhaps Detective Lendt—coming up the drive. It was very concerning that nothing had been heard from the detective.

  Most everyone she came upon was kind to her.

  Cook, the great, burly head of the kitchen, gave her lovely snacks and told her about the time he’d spent as a sailor in India and Ceylon.

  Aunt Elodie and her companion, Adelaide, had Adi for tea in their lovely apartments in a great turret on the south wing.

  Uncle Lionell’s wife, Cici, took her out riding one morning. Not speaking was a little awkward, until Adi realized the woman was more than happy to ride in silence as long as they rode hard and fast. As the child of a cavalry officer, Adi did not disappoint her.

  But inevitably it would become too difficult to keep the smile on her face and anxiety would overwhelm her once again. So as courteous and kind as they all were, she didn’t remain in anyone’s company for long.

  Except for Thomas. He checked up on her as often as he could without it seeming as if that was what he was doing. No doubt, George had left instructions, along with all the bits of information he had learned from Adi about the boys and the watch and the riddles.

  Though her participation was necessarily limited, Thomas would sit with her in the library and speculate upon the motivations of the kidnapper and ponder the meaning of the riddles: Why would “Jeremiah be quite blind?” How could the “devil have four knees?” Round and round they went.

  They did manage to figure out the correct date that the seconds on the watch added up to. Examining a Catholic liturgical calendar, Adi realized that 1916 would be a leap year. This altered her calculations by a day (or 86,400 seconds). The time would run out on the eleventh of November, 1918—not the twelfth. They were excited to get the figures right until they considered the horrifying idea that it might require four and a half years to find the boys.

  After a time, Thomas would have to go and Adi would be on her own again. A wave of fatigue would wash over her and draw her back to her room and pull her down into that damnable bed.

  She would then wake hours later to find she’d, again, done nothing, which just made her more despondent and want to sleep more.

  • • •

  This came to an abrupt end, when, on the third day after George’s departure, Adi woke late in the morning to find Duchess Johanna sitting in a chair at the side of her bed. The little terrier, in her lap, was eyeing Adi suspiciously.

  As always upon awakening, Adi had that instant of panic that she would speak before she could stop herself, so it must have appeared as if she were waking from a nightmare.

  The duchess murmured at seeing the girl awake, but didn’t say anything for several minutes. Adi sat up in bed, trying her best to straighten her nightgown and brush the hair out of her face.

  “I’ve always been good at languages,” said the duchess, apropos of nothing. As if they had been in the middle of a conversation. She scratched her dog’s forehead.

  “Good at languages, even for someone from Holland. Everyone in Holland speaks four or five. Surrounded by all those countries, you rather have to, you see. By the time I was your age, I was fluent in a dozen different languages. I had a knack, as they say.”

  Adi nodded, waiting to see where this was going. The duchess seemed lethargic, almost as if she’d been drinking. Though her speech wasn’t slurred. She seemed more dreamy than drunk.

  “That’s how I met the duke,” she continued.

  “I was a translator for the Danish ambassador at the court of . . . somewhere. Doesn’t matter.” She didn’t bother to finish the thought.

  “The ambassador used a great deal of, shall we say, colorful language.” The duchess smiled. “George always said he fell in love with me as I struggled to translate.” She looked up at Adi.

  “Of course, I mean the duke. I’m certain your George could never be accused of . . . well.”

  She straightened the rings on her hand, appearing to get lost for a moment in the facets of a huge dark ruby.

  “I met a man when I was just about your age. Just about . . .
”

  She put her head back in her chair and gave a little shiver, her eyes nearly closed.

  “The one . . .” she murmured, “the one you fall in love with . . . with his eyes, blue as the sea . . . that is the one . . . you end up hating. He’ll reach inside and take a piece of you . . . that you’ll never get back. And every day you . . . look into the eyes of your child . . . and are reminded of that part. The part of you that’s gone . . . and is never . . . never coming back again.”

  Adi could only stare.

  “So you see,” the woman said, raising her head and continuing, as if nothing had happened, “I wasn’t always a duchess.” She said the word as if it seemed preposterous. “There was a time I was a young woman with an occupation, and a child.”

  The duchess petted her dog and looked over at a little painting of a horse on the wall near Adi’s bed.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I suppose just to say—I understand how difficult it is in this world for a woman.”

  For once, Adi was glad to be without a voice. She wouldn’t have known what to say. She smiled tentatively.

  The duchess didn’t smile back.

  “That’s why I want to give you this.” She pulled an envelope from beneath the dog and placed it on the side table.

  “I’m sure it’s not as much as you’d hoped, but it is . . . substantial, for a young woman such as yourself.” She tapped the table with her fingernails and stood. The terrier hopped down.

  “I will need you to be gone before they return from Paris.” She turned to leave. “Talk to one of your maids when you’re ready. I will arrange transportation.”

  A hundred things crossed Adi’s mind. She jumped out of bed, snatched up the envelope and dashed over to the duchess as she was reaching the door. The dog bared its teeth and growled.

  The duchess turned and looked at the girl and at the envelope she held out. Adi shook her head.

  The older woman’s eyes grew hard. She pulled the envelope from Adi’s hand. “Have it your way.”