Now We Shall Be Entirely Free

by Andrew Miller

  He found himself wishing—absurdly!—that Thorpe was present. Thorpe might have interesting ideas. And two men could mount guard in a way one could not. Cornelius would be useless, and Ranald, a man with no hands, should be kept well clear of it all. But Thorpe! His opinion of him was that he was a version of the mad cabinet-maker Emily had had for a father, a spouter of cod-wisdoms, a snare for credulous women. Or that was the opinion he would have offered to a stranger. Beneath it—the underweave—was some idea of him as remarkable, someone you gave the first place to, gratefully. A man who did not doubt himself.

  They were close now. He went back to Emily, stood her up beside the ratlines. What he saw and recounted, she listened for.

  “And are there people, John?”

  “People?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two women in the company of a cow. And there’s a man on the pier. To take our ropes, I suppose. No one else.”

  They were sliding in, the mate at the bows, the captain back by the helmsman, all others, the cook included, dropping sails or standing by. Lacroix had spent enough time at sea these last months to know where to be out of the way. The man on the pier moved like a somnambulist, but when the first coiled rope was thrown he was in precisely the place to receive it and as the Halcyon drifted the last yards he turned the rope around an iron bollard then ambled back to take the stern line. This was the perfection of repetition, the power of not-much.

  With the Frieslander’s help, Lacroix and Emily got down on to the jetty with their bags. The captain held up his watch and tapped its face. Lacroix mouthed “yes,” and bobbed his head, sorry, now they were here, to leave the company of these men who knew so well what they were about.

  With Emily he took up the usual arrangement, the bags in his hands, her left hand on his right shoulder. They could not hurry on the planking of the jetty but once they reached the road it was easier, slightly. They headed for the inn, the only building of any substance, certainly the only one with an upper storey and a slate roof. The people there kept a gig and pony and Lacroix meant to hire them, but when, hot and midge-bitten, they entered the dark of the parlour, they were told the gig had a wheel off and the pony was out to a man called MacRae who wanted it for the harvest. It would be back in a week, though it would probably need to rest then.

  “That is no good to us,” said Lacroix. “You might as well use the gig for firewood.”

  Emily pinched his arm. She spoke to the innkeeper. She told him—reminded him, for he certainly already knew—about her sister’s condition, hinted at developments that made her presence at the house a matter of urgency.

  “You could take old Tom,” said the innkeeper.

  “Old Tom?”

  Lacroix and the man went out together. They walked across the unfenced land in silence, walked twenty minutes before coming upon a big horse, his head down and grazing on sea pinks. He came with them easily enough, and in a lean-to at the rear of the inn Lacroix picked through tangles of old tack. There were no saddles. He rigged up a kind of bitless bridle with the parts of two head collars, then climbed on to the horse’s back from a stool before lifting Emily up behind him.

  “Did you not ride a cow before?” asked the innkeeper. He seemed to intend no disrespect. “Old Tom should be easy enough.”

  It took Lacroix a full mile to find the horse’s mind, to establish some understanding between them. At certain places, entirely of the horse’s choosing, they trotted. For the rest they plodded, ambled, the motion easier for them all. They rode towards the sun. Emily, side-saddle, rested her head against Lacroix’s back. Her bag was in front of him; his own bag he had left at the inn to be collected when he returned the horse. He wondered what the innkeeper would have said if they told him the truth of their journey. Where would it fit among the strange, even fabulous things, the man might know? An innkeeper on one of the edges of the world! And these people, the Gaels, were a curious mix, rooted and practical, but living easily among dreams and stories and superstition, one ear always pressed against the night-world, or whatever it was, the correct name for that part of life people were forgetting how to address.

  “I can smell the burning,” said Emily.

  “A turning? Here?”

  “The kelp, John. We cannot be far off.”

  He had done no more than follow the road. Now, as the road became uncertain, became a track, became two paths, paths that soon guttered out in the grass, he began to recognise the landscape. He tapped old Tom’s flanks with his heels. The horse looked up, caught something of the new mood of purpose, and went on at a smarter pace. Smoke to the south, grey smoke and the haze of heat from the trenches. Then the sea was in view, dark under the blaze of a low sun. Another half-hour and a patch of white became the facing wall of a house. Fifteen minutes after that and both house and boat shed were in plain view, and not smouldering ruins but exactly as they had left them. Lacroix tensed his gaze, trying to pick out the human upright, a moving figure. He could see Emily’s garden, the path to the well . . .

  “They will be amazed to find us suddenly in front of them,” he said. For a moment he had put aside the reason for their return. This was a homecoming. Emily had been placed in his care and here he was, returning her, unharmed and perhaps soon to have the use of her eyes again.

  “Jane is in her room,” said Emily. “She is sewing something. Not very well.”

  “And Cornelius,” said Lacroix, “is uncovering the last blackened toe of the Caledonian Achilles while poor Ranald pretends to take an interest.”

  “Yes,” she said, “Ranald. There’s a voice I have missed.”

  They came down a long, gentle slope, through grey stone and flowering heather. They had momentum now. The horse lifted the great brown bells of his hooves and the ground slid comfortably beneath them, but fifty yards from the house Lacroix tightened the reins and they stopped. He did not know why, and when Emily asked what it was he said it was nothing, nothing. He started the horse moving again but he felt different now, as though his eye had registered some flaw in the pattern of things he could not yet name. The green front door was shut, the windows coloured with the flat glare of the sun. Anyone inside the house would be able to see out easily enough but you could not see in.

  He rode up close to the door, swung Emily down then climbed down himself. For a moment he considered the wisdom of leaving her outside while he went into the house on his own but she held his arm tightly and they went together. The front door opened at the turn of the handle. (The door had a keyhole but if it had a key Lacroix had never seen it, nor were there any bolts on the back of it.) The second door, the door into the big room, stood wide. They paused at the threshold. Lacroix looked in. The ottoman, the stairs. A shawl on the floor by the bottom of the stairs where perhaps it had slid from the banister. The dining table was spread with sheets from a newspaper and on the paper were pieces of shaped stone and pottery. The kitchen door was shut, the door to Cornelius’s room partly open.

  “Jane?” called Emily. “Cornelius?”

  They went to the kitchen. The door to the outside—another unlockable, unboltable door—was shut. Two pots with some congealed matter in the bottom of them stood on the range. There was no fire and no embers. They returned to the big room.

  Lacroix sat Emily on the ottoman and went up the stairs to Jane’s room. He knocked, entered. The bed was unmade, tousled. He touched the sheets as though hopeful they might still be warm. For several seconds he stared out through her window. When he came down the stairs he picked up the shawl and put it around Emily’s shoulders.

  “It is us who will welcome them back to the house,” he said. He pressed the wall by the ottoman, moved along a little and pressed again. The door of his room swung open. Emily’s guittar, his fiddle case, the bed with his little pile of possessions on it, the uncurtained window.

  “I know where they are,” called Emily.

>   “Yes?”

  “They will be on the hill watching the sun set.”

  He went and crouched by her knees. “At the excavation?”

  “You could fetch them,” she said.

  “The sun will be down in a couple of hours. They’ll come back then.”

  “But I am anxious to see them, John. It will not take you long.”

  “You mean I should leave you here?”

  “We are at the house now. I feel perfectly safe. And I have done enough for one day. I would like to rest. I need to.”

  He looked up at her. It was suddenly obvious to him that she could not be expected to do any more. “Well,” he said. “I suppose. If you wish it. And if I do not find them I will turn around and come straight back.”

  He asked if she would like her guittar for company. She said she would. He fetched it from its peg, dusted it with his sleeve and settled it in her lap.

  “It will need tuning,” she said, her left hand already sliding up the instrument’s neck towards the brass box and the little key.

  He went out. He looked at the horse then decided to walk. He could stride now, unencumbered by luggage, by a woman in a blindfold. He thought, my sword hand is free, then thought of his sword left lying in a room in Spain, and of the fact that there was not even a branch of wood on the island he could use in its place. After a few minutes he halted to look back at the house. He fancied he could hear the guittar but knew he could not, not really. What could he hear? Birds. The sea. The sea perhaps. That too he might be imagining.

  He went on. The air had a scent, a herbal sweetness, his own walking gave rise to. Heather, wild thyme, clover. But how open it was here! No hiding place for anything bigger than a lapwing. He was, he realised—had been since that moment on the ride down to the house—moving in two realities at once. In the first, everything was perfectly ordinary and just as it appeared, the island as he had come to it in the beginning. In the other, he had to resume the habits of active service, the scanning and reading of the land, the making and remaking of schemes with which to meet what could only be guessed at. If he had poor Ruffian under him! A man on a cavalry horse is a powerful man. On foot he is nothing but himself, the bare creature, unresourced. And into his mind came the face, the scarred arms, of the gunsmith in Bristol, his quip about infantry officers always trying to see over the top of something. He remembered it but it did not make him smile.

  He walked hard, leaned into the air ahead of him, but as he neared the bottom of the hill, walking his shadow into the hill’s shadow, he slowed his pace. He had, he realised, no clear idea what he was going to say if he found Jane and Cornelius sitting on the far side. Cries of surprise, hearty handshakes. And then? They would be expecting a story about eyes, operations, a hospital. About Rizzo and Glasgow. Jane might be expecting a story about himself and Emily. Instead, they would hear a tale about some soldier run amok and searching the islands to do God knows what. All too easy to picture the confusion, the exchange of glances. Cornelius would laugh. He would think it was a joke. And even if he managed to persuade them, why should they not simply refuse to go anywhere? They were not old friends. They had between them half a summer. And it was he who this man was after. Lacroix who had called himself Lovall. The dubious stranger. The liar.

  Ten strides from the brow of the hill—he had begun to settle on a scheme of saying as little as possible, of leaving the bulk of it to Emily—he noticed an object lying, casually, in the grass a short way to his left. A thing dropped, an object out of its place. He went towards it (already he seemed to know everything), and crouched beside it. It was one of Ranald’s hooks. He touched it, solemnly, as though touching flesh rather than iron. Then he looked up, swiftly, to where the evening sky stood on the hill. His mouth was very dry, his breath in his throat like a feather. He picked up the hook, held it by the leather sheathing. It was the closest thing he had to a weapon. It was the only thing.

  He covered the remaining yards at a crouch, his free hand brushing the grass-tips. He wished to Christ he could have more faith in his hearing. At the top he readied himself but when he stood he saw only the cropped blue slope, the empty sea. Ahead of him was the trench he had worked in with Cornelius. Beyond it were two new trenches, one smaller than the other, each with its pile of excavated peat and rubble. He walked down to the old trench and looked inside. It was dark in there, the dusk light already brewed into night, but he could see at the bottom the soft petal of a man’s face, and after staring at it a while not knowing if he should weep or roar or simply run away, he dropped the hook on to the grass and climbed in. He knelt by the man’s head, put a hand against his neck. The skin was warm and he could feel the movement of the blood.

  “Ranald! Ranald, man!”

  An eye opened, peered up at him.

  “Ranald. It’s Lacroix. Lovall. Listen. I am going to lift you. Yes? Lift you out of here.”

  The eye seemed to give its assent. Lacroix manoeuvred himself along the trench until he stood at Ranald’s side, then slid down as low as he could go, pushed one arm beneath Ranald’s knees, one beneath his shoulders, pressed his own back against the earthen wall, and lifted. No groan from Ranald, or if there was he did not hear it. He raised him high enough to clear the lip of the trench, then scrambled out himself, came round and lay on the grass beside him. He had taken a tremendous beating. You could still feel the heat of it. On the left side of his face the skin was tight and purpled, his left eye lost in the swelling. A long gash from his left eyebrow to his hairline. Left ear ripped. Part of it missing perhaps. A good deal of drying blood around his mouth.

  “Ranald! Can you hear me? Ranald. Think of Aboukir, man. The beaches.”

  “I had not forgot them,” said Ranald.

  “No, you have not, I know it.” He could have embraced him then. A depth of relief that felt not importantly different from love. “Ranald. The one who attacked you. A soldier? A soldier with bandy legs? Calls himself Henderson?”

  “He did not offer me his name,” said Ranald. “But it was him.”

  “And Jane? Cornelius?”

  “Gone.”

  “What?”

  “They had . . . word of Mr. Thorpe. They have gone to meet him. They will not be back today. Nor tomorrow I think.”

  “Ranald. This man. He knows where the house is?”

  “He will find it.”

  “Listen, listen. Emily is there. She is alone. I have left her alone. I will come back for you, I swear it. As soon as I can.”

  He tore off his coat and spread it over the damaged man. Ranald was speaking again. Lacroix watched his lips but it didn’t help. He lowered his head, turned it until he felt Ranald’s breath against his ear.

  “He means to kill you, Mr. Lovall. He made that plain enough.”

  He ran. Ran and stumbled and ran again. It was clumsy to run in boots. He sat, dragged them off, left them on their sides in the heather. He pushed himself, ran right at the edge of nausea. When the house was in view he stopped again, bending forward, hands pressed against his thighs, heaving in the air. He could not see the horse, then saw it had wandered down to the sea and was standing there, gazing out like an old man lost in the contemplation of wonders.

  He ran again. No thought of stealth now. At the front door he paused to look over his shoulder. From inside the house came a steady hum of silence. He went in. Emily was lying on the ottoman, the guittar held in her arms like a sleeping child. The room was cut with light and she lay just beneath its surface. He woke her.

  “Jane?” she said.

  He pulled her to her feet, held her upper arm with one hand, took the guittar with the other. “He’s here,” he said. “Henderson.” He went with her into his room, sat her on the chair at the far end, hung the guittar on its peg beside her, then closed the door and looked for something to secure it with. There was nothing, or there was only the bed. He put
the small pile of his things on the floor and pushed the bed up hard against the wood. He thought it was probably useless, would keep someone out for no more than a few seconds but at least the door would not now give at a touch.

  He squatted on the floor under the window and took the wrapped pistol from where it lay on top of Lovall’s writing case. He began to unwind its swaddling.

  “Jane and Cornelius are safe,” he said. “They have gone away. Ranald is hurt but will live. We cannot speak now, Emily. We will listen. We will be still and we will listen.”

  He threw the oilcloth aside and drew back the hammer to half-cock the pistol for loading. He knew—remembered clearly, could see his hands at the work—he had made up cartridges on the Jenny. He could not, however, remember where he had put them. Were they in the bag that was stolen? He stared at the gun as though it might inform him. What was this? Some effect of fear? Some mental locking brought about by fear? And why was he bothering with the pistol at all? Did he seriously think he was going to shoot anybody? They would be better off hiding themselves among the dunes. Or in the house? There must be some chest or deep cupboard they could lie in together, play dead . . .

  He was, in his confusion, starting to look for it, the hiding place, when he saw, on the other side of the chair where Emily was sitting, the scuffed leather nose of his fiddle case. He crawled to it, unbuckled the straps, lifted out the fiddle, opened the lined box below, took out two of the cartridges. He glanced up. The top of a man’s head passed the window, left to right, a distance of five yards or so. Lacroix touched Emily’s hand. “Not a sound or a movement,” he said.

  Then the head was back, the head, a face looking in at the window’s edge, but it was the wrong edge for any easy view of Emily and Lacroix. He did not see them, or if he did he gave no sign of it. He dropped away. Lacroix crawled back to his place under the window, took up the pistol and bit into one of the cartridges. He had recognised that neat and narrow face perfectly well, for though they had been in company together only a short time—hours more than days—it was a face he would remember for as long as he remembered the village of Los Morales. Not Henderson though. Never that. His name—the one he had called up in a clear voice from the frozen mud of the road that day—was Calley. Corporal Calley. Calley who cropped girls’ heads so they would not forget the British army.