Thomas, A Secret Life

by A. J. B. Johnston

  As they pass under the giant metal-capped teeth of the great wooden portcullis, moving into the dark centre of the Martilly Gate, Thomas’s thoughts are on the mistake that he made in the afternoon just past. It wasn’t just that he went into the underground with an enemy like Vinaigre. No. Oh, true enough, that was part of it. But there was more to it than that. What he’s decided he’s learned is to never again put himself in a situation he can’t control. Or if not control at least be able to influence.

  “No, that’s right.” Thomas heartily slaps Jean-Chrys on the back. “Why would you ever go back into that animal’s cave? Me either, Jean-Chrys, me either.”

  By the time the boys get to the square with the fountain of Esmangard, which is where they go their separate ways, the narrow streets of the ancient town are deep in evening shadow. To the townspeople who were not underground with Thomas and Jean-Chrys, it’s simply the descent of another late-summer night. To the two friends, it’s time to eat heartily at dinner and afterwards gladly go to bed.

  —

  Thomas runs the thumb of his right hand back and forth along the sliver of bread in his left hand. He has the piece as slim as he wants it, which he knows from experience can’t be too thin. The bread has to retain enough stiffness so that it won’t break or leave more than a few crumbs behind. The secret is to dip it in and pull it out on the count of four. The bread feels ready.

  Thomas leans back to get a crick out of his neck and scans the surface of the table where he’s been busy preparing his crust. It’s a marvel how many crumbs the preparation makes. As always, he’ll sweep them away once he’s done. He likes to keep this little treat a secret, so no one knows what it is that he does.

  He puts his head at a listening angle, just in case. He hears father and mother in the shop, as they always are this time of day. It sounds like they’re with a customer.

  As for Servanne, the seventeen-year-old servant who sleeps in the room off the kitchen, she must be out of the house. Thomas figures she’s off doing laundry, which will keep her out of the house for a while. Meanwhile the cook, a day servant, has not shown up yet. She’s always late. His sister, Anne? Who knows? She could be anywhere. Thomas hears only the tick of a distant clock and the faint footsteps of someone far, far away. He decides it must be his sister, somewhere upstairs.

  Thomas takes a last look at his task. The honey jar on the tabletop and the sliver of bread in his hand. With a blink of his brown eyes to say go, he pushes his crust into the golden surface. The honey bends and yields, and Thomas smiles to see the semi-liquid spread up and round the bread gone in. He counts the seconds. More than four and the bread can come apart or at least leave too much of a trace. He’s learned all this over the past few months, ever since he started dipping stiff bread in honey when no one was around.

  “Three, four,” he says barely aloud.

  He jerks the bread out and leans down to reap his catch. Head nearly touching the tabletop he opens wide and just in time it turns out. The molten drip covers his teeth and his tongue. It’s a slow advance of golden sweetness throughout his whole mouth. Thomas straightens, and runs his tongue everywhere, wherever the honey coursed its path. He smacks his lips then sucks the remainder of the bread to get anything that might be left. Then he chews the sliver till it’s completely gone.

  “Master,” Servanne says softly, not wanting to frighten him, just let him know that he’s been caught.

  Thomas stiffens. The head turns slowly toward the voice.

  “Yes,” he says, face and eyes coming just far enough around to see the servant over by the turnspit. “Oh, Servanne.” His cheeks flex with annoyance because he hears a trace of guilt in his own voice.

  “Wondering if there’s something you want me to do?” She keeps her head lowered, looking anywhere but directly at Thomas. “Here in the kitchen I mean.”

  Thomas turns full round. The first thing he notices are the moccasins, the Indian shoes, on the girl’s feet. He remembers her telling him she bought them at an auction a few weeks ago. That explains why he didn’t hear her coming, why he thought the steps were far away, maybe in his sister’s room upstairs. He wipes his mouth with the cuff of his left sleeve. He pouts with his full lips in a pretence of deep thought.

  “Anything I should see to in here?” she asks again. “Young master?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  Thomas straightens like he’s a busy person with something to do. He makes a last sweep with the hand behind his back then steps away from the table to come closer to the hearth.

  “Something funny, Servanne?”

  “No, sir.” The servant girl tightens her face. “Just looking forward to … well, what was it now? Gone like that. Empty headed, I am sometimes.” Servanne averts her eyes from the boy and takes a long step in the direction of her little room. Then she stops. “I notice a bit of a mess. Crumbs, young Master Thomas. Over there.” She points. “No, near the table. Someone’s been in the honey pot. Dipping is my guess. Maybe you could see to cleaning that up yourself?”

  “Yes, well then,” says Thomas, blushing at the accusation and the smirk on Servanne’s face. So she knows what he’s been doing and is challenging him to come clean. He replies to her inquiry by hurrying past her on his way to the stairs and up to his room. The golden sweet swirl of the honey in his mouth is all gone.

  Spring 1714

  “Thomas,” comes a voice from below.

  The boy, going through the time of rapidly growing limbs and deepening voice, looks up. He is working on a verse at his wobbly desk in his attic room. He has been searching, without success, for a word to rhyme with the end of the second line. He has come up with a couple of possibilities – bevy and levy – but neither fits the sentiment he wishes to express. If he can’t find one soon he’ll have to recast the second line so that some other word comes at the end. That’s because there has to be a rhyme with heavy, but the rhyme has to make sense.

  “Thomas.” The voice comes again, sharper this time.

  Thomas stares at the door to his room. It’s closed, which is how he likes it. It gives him time, not much but a bit, to put things away should he hear someone climbing the stairs. It doesn’t happen often, though occasionally his mother or sister comes up to see what he’s doing. Father doesn’t climb the stairs because he doesn’t have to. What he does instead is bellow from down below, like he’s doing right now.

  “Thomas. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Father.” Thomas puts down the quill. He stacks up his sheaf of papers and puts it back inside the empty book cover that he uses to contain and protect what he writes. Then he places the whole thing inside the only drawer of the desk.

  “Come down, please.”

  “Coming.” Thomas also puts the ink well and quill in the drawer. He prefers the surface of his writing table to be completely clean and empty when he’s not seated there working on something. Uncluttered. Hidden away. That way, no one knows what he’s up to and yet it only takes him a moment to bring things out. “Right there, Father.”

  Thomas spies the length of blue silk coiled up at the back of the drawer. It still comes in handy, and allows him to say no with a clear conscience when the priest asks him certain questions in the confessional. Do you ever touch yourself? No, Father, I do not. Except to relieve myself when I have to use the chamber pot.

  Thomas glances at his little mirror and gives his dark-eyed reflection a friendly wink.

  “Thomas! Down here now!”

  He bends to the mirror and takes both hands to undo the black ribbon that has been tied round his long brown hair, keeping it tied in a neat queue. He shakes his head to unfurl what has been contained. He thinks the tumble of dark hair makes him a highwayman or a poet. Though if his nasty grandmother were still alive, she’d say it made him look even more like some untended peasant girl.


  “Boy! Now.”

  “Coming.”

  He scuttles down the stairs, arriving on the ground floor with eyes wide and quickening breath. Tomorrow is March thirtieth, his fourteenth birthday. He hopes, no, he prays, that Father is calling him down to announce something of importance. He hears it in the voice, the way the man says “now” and “if you please.” There must be news, big news on the way. And Thomas knows what he wants that news to be. He swells his lungs just before he steps into the salon. It must be that his parents have at last understood who Thomas is and what he has the potential to be. It took them long enough, did it not? For so long they would not let go of the idea that he should either follow his father into the family cloth business or else become a priest. Jean Pichon wanted the former while Marie made no secret she preferred the latter. Learn the clothier’s trade or join the Church. Thomas could not tell them right out that he was not meant for handing over bolts of cloth to customers in off the street or for bestowing empty blessings on all sorts of unwashed in the Church. But now, he detects it in his father’s urgent voice, they must have figured it all out for themselves. They must have learned finally that he has talents and ambitions to be more than a merchant or a priest. They don’t know about his poetry, but they’ve undoubtedly come round to see that his second choice, medicine, is a good field for their son. They are right to think so. His rise in rank and standing will benefit them all.

  Thomas takes another breath, shallow this time. He wants the news to be that they’ve made arrangements for him to study in Caen, though Paris would be better still. At the very least they have to agree that it will be best for him to get away from Vire. Thomas takes the step forward so he can be seen.

  “Father.” Thomas halts in the threshold to the salon. He is unable to hide a smile. It is such a relief that his parents have come round. Thomas offers an adult-like tilt of the head. It is how he has seen one man sometimes greet another, at least when it is equal to equal. Jean Pichon is standing by the first flames of the evening fire. How that man does love to warm his backside.

  “Took your time.”

  “I am sorry, Father. Oh, good evening, Mother. I’m sorry, I did not see you at first.”

  “Yes,” is all Marie says.

  Thomas bows to his mother, Marie Esnault by birth, Madame Pichon by marriage. She is seated where she always sits in the salon, on the flame-coloured divan that came from her family at the time of her marriage to Jean Pichon. Its Hungarian stitch pattern is long since well-worn, overdue for re-upholstering. She often says she must have it re-done, but so far she has not. The financial setback suffered at the hands of La Motte has put any such expenditure on hold.

  Thomas squints in confusion to see his mother looking grim. Her hands are clasped tight in her lap. Is that worry on her face or has someone died? No, Thomas decides, his mood rebounding, she is merely resigning herself to the fact that her son will not after all become a priest. Her sad face is in that respect a good thing, a confirmation that Thomas is about to get what he wants and needs. Mother will come round. She’ll be proud of her physician son, yes she will.

  “Me too, little brother.”

  Thomas cranes to his far right, where his sister, Anne, is feigning a yawn. She is standing half hidden between the dark green drapes that hang from near the ceiling down to the floor. Despite having spoken, the moment Thomas glances her way Anne turns around to gaze somewhere else. She pretends to peer out the window beside her, though Thomas knows she doesn’t really care who is passing by.

  “Sister,” says Thomas, adding a roll of the hand such as a gentleman might offer to a lady.

  He has no objection to her being there to hear the news. In fact, it’s better this way. She might even be pleased for him. After all, everyone in the family stands to benefit from his rise and advance, even her. Reflected glory must be better than having none at all.

  “Yes, well.” Thomas turns an eager face to his father. He places his hands behind his back and plants his feet. He glances down to make sure there is a slightly angled turn to the calf of his left leg. It’s the stance gentlemen adopt when at ease. Many a time Thomas has observed the stance in the square and along the streets, and he and Jean-Chrys practice it for fun.

  Jean Pichon rolls his eyes and sends a pointed look his good wife’s way. “Yes, well,” begins the father coming back to study his son. The man spreads his thumb and forefinger and rubs them along his bristly brows. Then he clasps his hands together like he might be inclined to pray. “We’ve been looking out for you, Thomas. You know that, I think. It is our duty. It is. Speaking, talking, inquiring. For months now. For your future....”

  “Yes, Father,” says Thomas. Silently he repeats: Paris, make it Paris. Caen would be all right.

  “Father Alexis says that you have an excellent—”

  “Father Alexis?” Thomas’s head snaps back. “What does Father … what does he have to do—”

  “Let your father finish,” says Marie from the divan. She flutters a hand like it’s a handkerchief her husband’s way. Her eyes avoid Thomas’s darting glance.

  What is going on, thinks Thomas. Is this sadness at his leaving Vire on his mother’s face or is this something else? He straightens his legs. The gentleman’s stance is no more. The son is confused. In desperation he swings to catch a clue from his sister over by the window. Anne lifts her cheeks and sends a shoulder rise. If she knows, she’s not revealing.

  “Father?” Thomas feels his left leg begin to pulse. It is not something he can control. “You, you were saying? I interrupted.”

  “Yes, thank you,” says Jean Pichon and not one word more.

  Husband and wife exchange expressions. Thomas follows the looks and thinks the faces are showing some kind of grim determination. Two sets of lips tightly pulled and eyes that match. Thomas feels the top of his head begin to spin. Someone is pulling a rope tight round his chest. A thought comes into his head, words he thinks he hears: this is what disappointment feels like. Thomas’s eyes flash to his father. The man’s bristly eyebrows, well-worn clothes and rough ways are an embarrassment to Thomas, but this is something worse. The man is going to let him down in some awful way.

  “We know it’s not your first choice, Thomas. No, it’s not.” Thomas is confused. It’s not like Jean Pichon to use roundabout words. He usually talks straight and cold. “A life in the Church is something you’ll thank us for one day.” Jean Pichon halts. He looks over to Marie.

  “The Church?” Thomas’s face is one of incredulity.

  “That’s right.”

  Thomas is shaking his head. “No. Not the Church. Not after all I’ve—”

  “After all you’ve what?” Jean Pichon’s voice goes hard, like the expression on his face. “What? You tell me you little—”

  “Husband, stop,” says Marie. She is shaking her head, the face mournful.

  “What? He’s never tried to help out around here. In the shop. If he had, we might not....”

  “Not now, Jean. Not now.”

  “All right.” Jean Pichon rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “All right.” He turns back to face his son. “We’ve not the means, Thomas. That’s all. We cannot send you anywhere that would … that would be at our expense. Not for medicine, not for anything. Not since the troubles with … the bugger La Motte wiped us out.”

  The room goes silent. The only sound is a clock ticking in the next room. That and, to Thomas only, the grating sound of air going in and coming out of his hollow lungs.

  He has the sensation he is back in the subterrane, in the darkness and not knowing if there is any way out.

  “We’re not made of money,” he hears his mother say, though the words are coming from far away. “We never were.”

  Thomas is in deep, still water. He is wet all over; his clothes are completely drowned. The water is now up to his n
eck and it’s climbing higher still.

  “So the Church it is,” his mother continues. “Really, in truth, you should be glad about it. Father Alexis says that …”

  The water is above Thomas’s head. The surprise is that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t mind. It’ll be quick, it’ll be over and that’ll be it.

  “The priest says you have a calling.” Thomas recognizes that it’s his father speaking now. Why won’t he just stop? “Frankly, I don’t see it, but who are we to argue with a priest. Besides....”

  In the stillness of profound disappointment, Thomas turns slowly his mother’s way. He wants to see her face. He remembers that she once was filled with love for him, he felt she really was. But he does not find his mother’s face. She has it hidden. It’s buried in her hands. He wonders why. Isn’t this just what she wants? Him a priest and her excused from purgatory for some secret crime. Well, he now knows what that crime is. It’s this. It’s what she is making him do.

  Thomas moves from his standing spot, his legs leading the way. He thanks his legs for that. He glances back at sister Anne, over by the curtains. That’s a smile on her face, is it not? Oh well, it’s all right for her and for Father and Mother to cast away his life this way. They can gloat all they want. But Thomas, the birthday boy, he has to go.

  “Thomas,” says his father, startled by what he sees, “don’t you walk away. Not from me you don’t.”

  Thomas is out the doorway of the salon.

  “Where’re you going? Hear me?”

  The voice shouting behind Thomas is faint. What’s clearer is the sound of his own shoes on the floorboards as he reaches for the door that is there to take him outside.

  “You come back here. You’ll stay if I say so. You hear me? Come back here. Don’t you dare, you—”

  —

  Out through the Porte Neuve and into the evening, Thomas makes his way beyond the few makeshift huts and shelters of the very poor that the town’s administration allows to stand on the southern edge of the outskirts of Vire. He is heading for the spot on high, where the ridge overlooks the countryside and the Vire River courses far down below. That’s the best spot. The vista from there, Thomas says to himself on the way, is the only thing he’ll miss when he’s gone.