The Silent Boy (16 page)

His eyes fill with tears.

‘Eat your roll,’ Fournier says gently. ‘You must leave in a moment.’

The gardener takes him to the Vicarage. He is a burly, middle-aged man called Jevons with skin like the shell of an old walnut engrained with dirt. They go on foot, walking in silence side by side down the drive, with Charles breaking into a trot every few yards to match the man’s longer strides.

The red-headed boy is sweeping leaves. He makes a face at Charles as they pass. You can still see the mark on his cheek, the faded red weal, the last trace of the whipping that the Count gave him.

‘Enough of your nonsense, George,’ Jevons roars. ‘You’re paid to work, not make a fool of yourself.’

Charles has not seen the village since the day that he arrived at Charnwood. As they pass through the outskirts, they attract the attention of a few boys, younger than Charles. Jevons snarls like a dog at them but, jeering and sniggering, the boys follow them up the lane to the church and as far as Mr Horton’s gates.

At the Vicarage, they go to a side door, not the front. A manservant answers Jevons’s knock. He stares with both curiosity and apprehension at Charles, as if he were an odd and potentially dangerous monstrosity.

‘Is he safe?’ he asks Jevons. ‘In the village they say he has fits. Is it true he bites people?’

‘Only if you let him see you’re scared of him,’ Jevons says.

The servant’s colour rises. He says in a haughty voice that Jevons is to wait in the kitchen until he is summoned.

A spaniel with a curly liver-and-white coat appears, her nose cocked in curiosity, her paws pattering on the gravel. She ignores the servant and Jevons but sniffs Charles’s hands and allows him to scratch her head. He feels a rush of uncomplicated affection towards this animal. He would like to kneel and throw his arms around her neck.

‘Go away, Bessie,’ the servant says. ‘Drat the dog. Always in the way, always trying to get into the house.’ He looks at Jevons. ‘Go on round to the kitchen. She’ll follow you.’

The servant takes Charles by the shoulder, gingerly as if he fears Charles might explode if handled incautiously, and draws him inside. He pushes the door shut with his foot.

The hall is clean and airy. It smells of lemon and beeswax. Charles hears the sound of a woman’s voice. A door opens, and a young woman appears with a book in her hand.

‘Thomas – is this Charles?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

She looks at the boy and smiles. ‘Come in here and wait with us. The Vicar was obliged to go out but he will be back directly.’ She glances at the servant. ‘Ask cook for a jug of lemonade and some biscuits.’

Thomas bows, a token nod, and withdraws.

‘I’m Miss Horton,’ the woman says to Charles. ‘Come along.’

He follows her into a drawing room. A square-faced, vigorous old woman is sitting by the fire.

‘This is Charles,’ Miss Horton says. ‘The boy from Charnwood. Charles, allow me to present Mrs West of Norbury Park.’

Habit does its work: he bows as his mother would have wished, as if the King himself were passing by at Versailles.

Mrs West claps her hands. ‘How pretty!’ Her voice is harsh and carrying. ‘Come here, child. Let me look at you.’

He stands by her chair and she examines him. ‘How do you like England?’ When Charles does not reply, she repeats the question in French.

Charles stares at her.

‘You know he does not speak, ma’am,’ Miss Horton says.

‘I like to examine these things for myself, my dear. He needs a new suit of clothes. I shall talk to Monsieur Fournier about it.’ She nods at Charles. ‘Sit down, child. There on the fender where I can see you.’ She smiles at Miss Horton. ‘Intriguing, is it not? It reminds me of those wild boys the French and Germans find in their woods. Noble savages. Except they rarely seem to be noble, do they? They show Monsieur Rousseau to be quite wrong, on that head at least. It seems to me that, without the society of human kind, they can be scarcely human.’

‘This does not apply in Charles’s case, ma’am,’ Miss Horton says. ‘One can see at a glance that he is entirely civilized.’

There is a tap at the door and the manservant enters with a tray. He is not alone – Bessie pushes between his legs, nearly oversetting him, and hurls herself into the room. The stump of her tail wags vigorously, waving a ghostly plume.

‘Bessie, you wicked girl,’ Miss Horton says.

The dog makes a rapid circuit of the room and comes to Charles. She sits on his foot and gazes into his face.

‘My father dotes on the wretched animal,’ Harriet says to Mrs West. She leans across and gently tugs one of the dog’s ears. ‘I truly believe he cares more for Bessie than he does for me.’

Bessie ignores her. She licks Charles’s cheek.

‘Take her away, Thomas, and shut her in the stables.’

The servant seizes Bessie and backs out of the room. Bessie whines and, Charles thinks, looks straight at him, imploring help.

‘She likes you, Charles,’ Miss Horton says. ‘You’re honoured indeed. She is most particular about where she bestows her favours.’

‘I can’t abide a dog that comes into the house,’ Mrs West says. ‘Nasty dirty creatures. But go on about the other day, my dear. Was it a terrible smash?’

Charles sips lemonade and listens to Miss Horton telling the story of Mr Savill’s unlucky arrival in Norbury.

‘But what is he
like
?’ Mrs West says.

‘He has a scar on his face and a most sarcastic turn of phrase. On the other hand, he was provoked. He was as wet as a sponge and covered in mud. I dare say he was bruised all over as well.’

‘Men never like to look ridiculous. Poor Mr West couldn’t bear it when I laughed at him.’

Miss Horton cocks her head. ‘There’s a horse on the lane.’

Mrs West looks at Charles. ‘Perhaps Miss Horton would bring you to see me at my house,’ she said. ‘You might take a boat out on the lake.’

‘What a charming idea,’ Miss Horton says. ‘I should like it above all things.’

The horse is on the drive now.

‘Is the Vicar really going to …?’

‘Pray with Charles?’ Miss Horton says. ‘Yes, ma’am, he is.’

‘How very odd,’ Mrs West says. She smiles, perhaps sensing that she has not been polite. ‘But I’m sure dear Mr Horton knows his business better than I do.’

The Vicar is a stout, red-faced gentleman. He peers through thick spectacles at Charles and wrinkles his nose as if there was a bad smell in the air. ‘Take him to the Justice Room,’ he tells the servant. ‘That will do very well. I will join him there in a moment.’

‘Pray be gentle with him, sir,’ says Miss Horton.

Mr Horton snorts, bows to Mrs West and marches away to the back of the house with the heavy tread and silent determination of a man in need of his privy.

Miss Horton smiles at Charles, and Thomas the manservant leads him along a passage. He hears the two ladies talking, the volume diminishing, and wishes he was with them.

The servant shows Charles into an apartment at the side of the house. It is plainly furnished with a scratched mahogany table, four hard chairs and a high clerk’s desk. The walls are lined with shelves and cupboards. There are few books on the shelves – only bundles of paper, tied with ribbons, and japanned metal boxes with labels attached to their handles. The room is gloomy, even in the morning, because the dripping leaves of a bush press up against the window.

Left alone, Charles does not dare to sit. He tries to read the labels on the boxes but finds they say only names, dates and incomprehensible combinations of letters. His head feels as though someone is squeezing it in a vice. He makes a survey of the room. It is slightly more than eight paces long by six paces wide.

This knowledge makes him feel somewhat better. He commits the measurements to memory, where they jostle with all the other measurements that lie there. In a perfect world, he would like a memorandum book in which to record all the figures. It would be agreeable to look at those columns of numbers, those neatly arranged and incontrovertible facts.

‘What are you doing?’

Charles turns so sharply that he bangs his thigh on the corner of the table. Mr Horton is standing in the doorway.

‘I’ve been watching you. Are you playing a game? Or is it the devil’s work? Eh?’

Charles stares up at him. He has heard the servants saying that the Vicar does not call at Charnwood for fear of moral contamination. Charles does not know what this is but he suspects it is something to do with the drains.

‘Either way, you should be able to answer a plain question. This silence of yours won’t do.’ Mr Horton advances into the room. ‘Pasty little thing, aren’t you? And thin as a rake. It’s all that foreign muck they make you eat. You need some English food.’

He pulls out a chair from the table and sits. He inflates his cheeks and lets the air out in a rush. His pink jowls quiver and his wig is slightly awry. He has three white crumbs on the lapel of his black coat, arranged like the points of an isosceles triangle.

‘Come here.’ He beckons Charles towards him. ‘I assume you speak English like a Christian? Or rather understand it, in your case? Your mother was English, after all – not that it signifies, necessarily. You could know Hottentot and nothing else – it would come to the same thing.’ He thrusts his face close to Charles’s. ‘The material point is that God will understand you, whatever language you speak. That’s all that matters.’

Charles feels the soft touch of Mr Horton’s spittle on his cheek. He turns his head away.

The Vicar’s voice sharpens, becomes peremptory. ‘Kneel, sir! Kneel, I say!’

Charles does not move. Mr Horton seizes him by the neck, spins him about and pushes at the back of his knees to make them bend. Charles kneels. When he shows a tendency to slump on his heels, the Vicar seizes his hair and tugs him upwards, compelling him to kneel erect.

‘That’s better, my boy,’ Mr Horton says. ‘We are praying to Almighty God, you see, and we must show Him respect. Even a boy like you must understand that. It is no more than common sense, after all.’

Huffing and puffing, he wriggles from his chair and lowers himself to his knees in front of Charles.

‘The Gospel of St Mark,’ he says, his voice slipping into the declamatory rhythms of the pulpit and the lectern. ‘Chapter seven, verse thirty-one: the miracle of the deaf-mute of Decapolis. “And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers in his ears, and he spit, and he touched his tongue.” Are you listening, my boy? You must lift up your soul unto God, even as a burnt offering unto his altars.’

Charles sways on his knees.

The Vicar pats him on the side of his head. ‘Stay still. Do me the courtesy of remembering that we are doing this for your sake. Now’ – he resumes his pulpit tone – ‘“And, looking up to heaven, he sighed and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain …”’

Having established the scriptural authority for miracles involving mutes, Mr Horton sets to work in pursuit of his own miracle. He prays aloud, extempore and with much spittle and great enthusiasm. As the minutes pass and the Vicar continues with no sign of abating his fervour, and no suggestion that the flow of his eloquence will ever come to an end, Charles ceases to grapple with the meaning of the words. Even the sound of them blurs and recedes. Mr Horton’s voice roars like the wind and the waves in the English Channel, the volume rising and falling. Charles feels seasick now just as he had then.

Later, as the words continue, he loses awareness even of their sound and, at last, even of himself.

Everything changes.

Charles finds himself lying on the floor. The Vicar and Miss Horton are kneeling beside him, one on either side. Charles’s nostrils are tingling and his lungs smart. Miss Horton holds an open bottle of hartshorn in her hand. Mrs West, her face alive with interest, is behind her.

‘The swoon’s passing,’ Miss Horton says. ‘Thank God.’

‘This is quite in order,’ the Vicar announces, wiping his forehead with a snuff-stained handkerchief. ‘The blessing of the Holy Spirit falls like a jolt of lightning on our weak mortal frames and prostrates us with its benevolent power. It would indeed be strange if it were otherwise.’

Miss Horton presses Charles down. ‘Lie still,’ she says. ‘You need to get your breath, and then we’ll send for the chaise to take you home.’

Home? Charles wonders. Where is home?

‘My carriage!’ Mrs West exclaims. ‘We shall take him back to Charnwood in that.’

The Vicar waves his hand impatiently. ‘We have been privileged to witness the power of prayer,’ he tells the ladies sternly. ‘And now behold a miracle.’ He prods Charles in the chest. ‘In the name of Christ Jesus,’ he cries. ‘Speak!’

Charles clenches his teeth to make a wall against the words. He stares at Mr Horton.

Miss Horton pushes the cork into the bottle of smelling salts. ‘I’m afraid the miracle hasn’t worked, Papa,’ she says. ‘Or not quite yet.’

There’s a pattering in the passage. Bessie noses open the door, slides between the Vicar and his daughter and sniffs Charles’s face.

‘The boy is mine,’ the Count said. ‘And that is all that matters.’

Savill felt a twinge of pity for Monsieur de Quillon. Here was a man who was used to being the master, whose health, birth and abilities had set him apart and above most of the human race. But now he was diminished: he retained the habits of grandeur but not its substance.

They were in the room the English servants called the library, though there were few books in the two glass-fronted bookcases. Apart from a large table and a few chairs, there was no other furniture. Despite the fire, the air was chill and damp.

The Count leaned back in his chair, which creaked beneath his weight. ‘I do not wish to cause you pain, sir. But you must realize that your wife was your wife only in name.’

‘Thank you, sir – I am perfectly aware of that,’ Savill said.