The Silent Boy

‘Charles,’ the Count says, ‘go upstairs. Go to your room and stay there until you are summoned.’

Fournier says nothing. He watches them with his bright eyes.

Someone knocks on the front door.

‘Use the main stairs,’ Monsieur de Quillon says to Charles. ‘Go. Go now.’

Fournier accompanies Charles into the hall. Joseph the footman is moving towards the front door.

‘Just a minute,’ Fournier says to the servant in English. ‘Who is it? Do you know?’

The footman changes course. He goes to a small window that commands a view of the forecourt in front of the house.

Charles climbs the stairs. He turns at the half-landing and continues up the next flight.

‘It’s Mr Roach’s cart, sir,’ he hears Joseph say. ‘And there’s a man sitting beside him. Don’t know him from Adam.’

‘You may open the door now,’ Monsieur Fournier says.

Charles hears the click of the library door closing. He glances down the stairs but he can see little of the hall below. What he can see, however, is the great mirror that hangs at the turn of the stairs so that the ladies and gentlemen may look at themselves as they go to dinner. The mirror is set in a gilt frame that is no longer golden but a dirty yellow brown. The glass is spotted with damp. The silvering near the bottom has quite worn away. Charles has hardly noticed the mirror’s existence before because usually he uses the back stairs.

In the foggy world of the reflection, a boy wavers in the depths of the mirror. Ignoring the voices in the hall below, Charles steps up to it and stretches out his right hand towards the boy he sees there. In the mirror the reflected boy mimics his action.

Charles’s right hand almost touches the boy’s left hand. The mirror glass is all that divides them, that and the layer of candle grease and dust that has settled along the bottom rail of the frame and spread slowly higher over the years.

‘Gentleman’s had a mishap on his way here,’ he hears a man say below in the rolling, comfortable voice that the peasants use in this place. ‘His chaise turned over in Parker’s field.’

Charles wonders whether he has lost his reflection as well as his voice. He does not recognize the boy’s face, his ragged clothes or his untidy hair – he is a stranger. Yet it is he, Charles. But he looks like someone else, not the boy who used to examine himself in Maman’s looking glass.

‘My name is Savill,’ says another voice, a man’s. ‘The Count de Quillon is expecting me.’

Charles turns and runs up the stairs.

Chapter Fourteen

Two manservants, a French valet smelling of scent and an English footman smelling of sweat, converged on Savill. At a nod from Monsieur de Quillon, the valet peeled away his outer garments.

‘My dear sir, you are soaked,’ the Count said in French. He glanced at his valet. ‘Make sure they’ve lit the fire in Mr Savill’s room.’

‘You are most kind, sir, but I cannot possibly—’

‘Nonsense, sir. You will stay with us.’

Fournier smiled at Savill. ‘Monsieur de Quillon is right,’ he said in English. ‘You will be doing us a kindness, sir – indeed, we have been counting the hours since your attorney’s letter arrived. We see very little company. Besides, the inn is quite intolerable.’

The two Frenchmen were both richly dressed but it was their manner rather than their clothes that proclaimed their station. Monsieur de Quillon was the elder of the two. His features were too irregular, and his face too marked by good living, for him to be accounted handsome. His German physician, Dr Gohlis, had been introduced but kept himself in the background.

‘Do you have a man with you?’ Fournier asked.

‘No,’ Savill said. ‘My chaise was hired in Bath and the groom will return there.’

‘No matter. We will find someone to look after you.’

‘Were you injured in the accident? I cannot help noticing …’

His voice tailed away, but his fingers fluttered, indicating the streaks of mud and cow-pat on the left side of Savill’s greatcoat and breeches.

‘It is nothing, sir. No more than mud and a few bruises.’

The footman brought in Savill’s portmanteau and set it down near the stairs.

Fournier glanced at it. ‘I see you are an old campaigner, and do not encumber yourself with baggage. Joseph will show you to your room.’

‘Yes, yes,’ the Count said. ‘So we shall meet again at dinner.’

He and Fournier retreated without further ceremony, and Gohlis trailed after them with the air of a dog uncertain of his welcome. Joseph the footman conducted Savill to a bedchamber on the first floor. According to the clock on the landing, it was nearly half-past five.

‘His Lordship and Mr Fournier dine at six, sir,’ Joseph said, as he laid the portmanteau on the bed. ‘I’ll fetch a jug of hot water for you after I’ve unpacked.’

Savill unlocked the portmanteau. The émigrés dined at a fashionably late hour which, in view of his late arrival, was fortunate. Joseph laid out a pair of darned stockings, a clean shirt and a black-silk stock. Apart from a pair of light shoes and the clothes he stood up in, Savill had nothing else to wear.

Joseph brushed and aired Savill’s breeches and then helped him to wash and dress. By the time they had finished, it still wanted ten minutes to dinner. Savill told the man to bring him the leather portfolio from his bag.

The footman obeyed and then left the room with the cloak and greatcoat over his arm and the muddy boots in his hand.

Savill sat by the fire and opened the portfolio. Here were the papers that Mr Rampton had provided him with.

Only now, as he glanced through them again, did it strike him as strange that no one at Charnwood had yet mentioned Charles. The boy was Savill’s reason for coming here. The two Frenchmen and the German doctor must have known that as well as he did. But none of them had said a word about Charles. Nor had the servants.

Nor, for that matter, had he. It was as if the boy did not exist.

During dinner, which was long and elaborate in the French fashion, Savill’s toothache returned. The pain caught him unawares on several occasions, and once he could not avoid making a sound of discomfort. He noticed Fournier glancing at him, though there was no break in his conversation.

Afterwards, when the servants had left them, Savill introduced his reason for being here, since no one else was in any hurry to do so.

‘Pray, my lord,’ he said to the Count, ‘when may I expect to see Charles? After dinner, perhaps?’

‘He will be in bed by then,’ Fournier said. ‘We keep country hours at Charnwood. He’ll soon be sleeping the sleep of the just. Isn’t that what you English say? The sleep of the just?’

‘Quite so, sir. But is he in good health?’

The Count reared up in his chair. ‘Perfectly. He is my own son, after all, and I would not see him go lacking for anything.’

Savill bowed. ‘Naturally.’ The Count’s remark had not been tactful, since it served to remind Savill that he had been cuckolded. ‘But after the loss of his mother and the trials he has gone through …’

‘There is one thing you should know, sir,’ Fournier put in. ‘Since the death of his mother, Charles has lost his voice.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. An infection of the throat?’

‘No, not exactly. Dr Gohlis will explain. He has been treating him for over a month now.’

The doctor glanced up the table at Monsieur de Quillon, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘It is a very unusual case, sir,’ he said, speaking in fluent but accented English. ‘There is no sign of infection. There is nothing wrong with him physiologically. Everything we know about him indicates that until recently he was fully capable of speech, and indeed showed a lively intelligence. But now he will say nothing at all. Moreover, his behaviour has become furtive. And at night he sometimes loses control of his bladder.’

‘What is your diagnosis, Doctor?’

‘I have constructed a hypothesis that the symptoms he displays are an extreme manifestation of a form of hysteria. This was obviously caused by the shock he received when his mother was murdered in such terrible circumstances. It follows that—’

‘He witnessed what happened that night?’ Savill said, his voice rising. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Gohlis nodded. ‘We cannot know for certain, sir, but it is a reasonable assumption. We believe he was in the house at the time.’

‘It is borne out by the fact that there were bloodstains on his clothes when he came to us,’ Fournier put in. ‘The old woman who brought him had tried to wash them out, but they were unmistakable.’

‘The poor boy.’

‘Indeed, sir. The heart weeps for him.’

‘Ah!’ Savill said.

‘What is it, sir?’ Fournier asked.

‘I beg your pardon, sir. A touch of toothache.’

The Count waved at the doctor. ‘Have Gohlis make you up a dose before you go to bed.’

‘Of course, my lord,’ Gohlis said, and swiftly lowered his eyes. A moment later he begged permission to withdraw, so that he might make up the medicine.

When the three of them were alone, Savill said, ‘Forgive me for raising the subject, my lord, but we have business to discuss.’

‘Of course we do.’ Both the words and the tone were obliging but somehow the Count contrived to suggest that Savill had committed a breach of good manners, for which of course he was forgiven. ‘But it’s growing late,’ he went on, ‘and we’re all tired. You especially, sir, no doubt after your terrible journey. We shall leave it until the morning when we are fresh.’

He spoke pleasantly enough but he left no room for manoeuvre.

At that moment there was a knock on the door. Joseph entered with a letter on a salver, which he handed to Fournier with a murmur of apology.

The latter broke the seal and skimmed its contents. With a snicker of laughter he tossed the letter on the table.

‘Something amusing?’ the Count asked. ‘Can it be shared? Or is it a private pleasure?’

‘The letter is from the Vicar – Mr Horton.’

‘He will not call on us,’ the Count said to Savill. ‘I fear he disapproves of us.’

Fournier smiled. ‘But this is different. It is by way of a professional matter.’

During the evening, the wind freshened, bringing draughts throughout the old house with its warped doors and creaking floorboards, and sending flurries of rain to beat against the windows.

They met again for supper. Afterwards the Count retired early to write letters. Savill sat with Fournier and Gohlis in a small parlour with a smoking fire.

The doctor had given Savill a dose of medicine – four drops in a glass of warmed water flavoured with brandy. Within half an hour, he felt better than he had for weeks. The toothache subsided and a sense of well-being spread throughout his mind and body. The medicine’s benevolent glow allowed him to ignore the faint – and surely unjustified – fear that he might have been unwise to trust himself to the ministrations of the Count’s personal physician.

‘The man who understands pharmacology,’ Gohlis said when Savill thanked him, ‘understands human happiness.’

‘Then it’s regrettable that pharmacology does not provide a drug to cure the dumb,’ Fournier said.

‘Not yet, sir,’ the doctor said eagerly. ‘But we make great strides every day. We have come a long way since poor Dr Ammam, who ministered to the dumb in the last century. He believed that to be mute was to be spiritually null, since man needs to be able to speak, for otherwise he does not resemble God the creator and God the son.’

‘It’s curious that the Ancients touch so rarely on the subject,’ Fournier said. ‘The affliction of being dumb, that is. The blind often have a heroic stature ascribed to them – consider Oedipus, for example. Or they have a peculiar wisdom, as Tiresias does. Even Samson, one might argue, does not attain his full moral stature until he has been blinded.’

‘Perhaps the Ancients sensed a truth that Science is now confirming,’ Gohlis said. ‘Mutes are often brutish creatures, less than human. Buffon mentions a case in his Histoire Naturelle of a young man born mute who learned to speak suddenly when he was twenty-four years of age. Despite having been trained in the outward observances of religion, he was found to have no conception of the soul or of salvation.’

Fournier smiled. ‘Is having no conception of the soul necessarily a sign of being less than human? One might even say it is a sign of a superior type of humanity. A type that transcends a need for a personal god.’

‘Indeed, sir.’ Gohlis was growing heated. ‘But in this case, it seems, the young man’s external piety concealed the mental faculties of a mere animal. And this is but one case among many. Herder records the story of a dumb boy who watched a butcher killing a pig and then promptly killed his brother, in the same way, for the simple pleasure of imitation. He felt no remorse whatsoever.’

‘But surely Charles has not always been dumb?’ Savill said. ‘Only for a few weeks.’

‘True, sir. But how long will the condition last, that is the question, and what will be its effects? Speech, it seems, is the wellspring of civilization, of our moral and intellectual life. Why, when I was last in Königsberg, I heard Professor Kant remark that the dumb can never attain the faculty of Reason itself, but at best a mere analogy of it.’

‘Then what treatment do you recommend, sir?’ Savill asked.

‘The continuation of what we have been following: a strict regimen, together with the occasional short, sharp shock to the system.’

‘Why?’

‘The shock, sir?’ Gohlis said. ‘Because it was the shock of his mother’s death that rendered him mute. Consider the mind and body as a complex mechanism – a sort of clock, if you will. Just as a clock may stop if it receives a jar or knock, so it may start again if it suffers another.’

‘But now,’ Fournier said, almost purring with pleasure, ‘just by way of contrast, we shall see how the Vicar proposes to treat it.’

‘The Vicar, sir,’ Savill said, more loudly than he had intended. ‘What has he to do with this?’

Fournier smiled. ‘You recall the letter I received while we were at table? Mr Horton is a clergyman who tends towards the Evangelical persuasion. He has a charming faith in the simple power of prayer to make the dumb burst into speech. In short, my dear sir, he desires to cure Charles with a miracle.’

Chapter Fifteen

From the safety of the darkened second-floor landing, Charles watches the gentlemen leaving the dining room. Their shadows leap across the floor. One of the gentlemen is the stranger.

Charles knows that the visitor is English; his name is Savill and he is come on business. The servants don’t like him being here because it means more work for them.

It is completely dark now. Charles crosses the landing and goes down the back stairs, which come out between the kitchen and the servants’ hall. He knows these stairs well. He has counted them many times, so the number of stairs is a fact that can never be doubted. He does not need to take a candle but feels his way with his hands.

The corridor at the bottom is dimly lit. The door of the servants’ hall is open. Standing at the foot of the stairs, Charles listens.

Joseph is talking to one of the maids. Charles understands most words he hears in English now.

‘That man,’ the footman is saying, ‘grim-faced devil, ain’t he, with that scar? Like walking death.’

‘Oh, Joseph,’ says Mary Ann. ‘Get on with you.’

‘Know what I think? He’s come for the Frog bastard.’

Sometimes they stare warily at Charles as if fearing that he might bite them if they let their guard down. He doesn’t belong with them, he doesn’t belong with the gentry, he doesn’t belong with the animals. He doesn’t belong with anyone. He belongs in a category all of his own.

‘What’s he want him for?’ Mary Ann says in her slow, thick voice like the cream in the dairy. ‘The boy’s an idiot.’

‘Damned if I know,’ Joseph says. ‘But that’s gentry for you. And foreigners makes it worse.’

When Charles sleeps at last, the nightmares come, as he knew they would. He sees the blood dripping like gentle red rain.

Say nothing.

The whisper sounds in his head like the wind under the door.

And then he hears it again. Tip-tap. Like cracking a walnut.

Not a word.

Nightmares have this to be said for them: they wake you up.

He’s screaming but nobody comes. But at least he is awake. The nightmare is reluctant to leave him. Gradually its hold on him loosens. He cries for a while, almost for the sake of something to do, something to fill the silent darkness.

At last the pressure on his bladder forces him to leave the warmth of the bed and pull out the chamber pot from under the bed where, when he was a baby, he had believed that nightmares lived.

So this nightmare has a silver lining of sorts. The bed stays dry.

This is the best time. Shortly after dawn, before anyone else is up except the servants.

The air is very clear, the colours of the distant hills are crisp and clean. The shadows are long and cold.

His footprints make ragged marks in the scythed grass, darker patches on the shining patina of moisture. In the pleasure grounds, he has to be wary, but it is easy to slip about unnoticed now he knows his way. He stays within the paling that encircles them – it would not do to risk the unknown terrors of the village and the fields around. He has never lived much in the country and he is afraid of cows, pigs, donkeys, dogs and much else he might reasonably expect to find there.

The gardener and his boy are cutting down a dead tree at the other end of the drive. So it is safe to go to the Garden of Neptune. The dew is heavier here because the garden is below the level of the surrounding land. The walls around it retain the cold and damp rather than the warmth.

Charles walks the paths, counting his steps. Counting fills his mind and quietens it. Moreover, in this world where so much has changed, and is changing, it is important to make sure that at least something remains unaltered: and the length and breadth of this garden is as good a place to start as any.

When he has finished his counting, he says to Louis, who has been pacing beside him, ‘See, it is just the same as it was before.’ And Louis agrees with him, for he was counting too.

They sit on the wall that surrounds the pool at the centre of the garden. Neptune stands above them. If only he had had his trident when the gardener’s boy tried to drown him. The sea god could have dropped it on the boy’s head and the prongs would have dug into his brain.

Charles imagines how the gardener’s boy would look if his face were covered with blood. His mouth would be open and gushing more blood like a fountain. His hair would then be the colour of blood rather than the colour of rust.

The creak of the gate.

Joseph is coming into the garden from the side nearest the house. ‘Why the devil are you hiding away here?’ the footman says.

Louis has gone.

‘You are wanted in the dining room. Look sharp.’

Charles follows Joseph, avoiding his footsteps in the dew but counting them as he walks.

‘It’s that Mr Savill,’ Joseph says over his shoulder, talking to himself as much as to Charles. ‘They want to show you to him. Give him a laugh, eh? Looks like he needs it. Mr Fournier’s been telling him all about you.’

The footman makes a patriotic point of anglicizing the names of all the foreigners. It is always Mr Fournier or Mr Saul, never some mangled form of Monsieur.

‘Maybe he’ll take you away. After all, you’re not much use to man or beast here. Or maybe he’ll just tan your hide hard enough to make you speak. That’s what I’d do, given half a chance.’

Charles wonders why the visitor should want to see him, why there is even a possibility that he might take Charles away.

A dark tide of panic rises, filling his throat, making it hard to breathe. Here there is at least something that belongs to his old life, that belongs to the old days when everything was all right, when his mother was alive and they lived in the apartment in the Rue de Grenelle.

Monsieur Fournier and the Englishman are still sitting at the dining-room table, though all trace of their breakfast has been cleared away. Mr Savill looks cross. Something has irritated him. Perhaps it is Charles.

Mr Savill is solidly built and has strongly marked features. But what you really notice is the long scar from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth.

‘Ah, my boy,’ says Fournier in French. ‘Good morning. Come here.’ He dismisses Joseph with a nod and turns to the Englishman. ‘And now, sir, allow me to present Charles.’ He turns back and smiles, for Fournier smiles a great deal, even at Charles. ‘This is Mr Savill.’

Charles takes a step backwards. Mr Savill stares at him. Charles shrivels under the gaze.

‘Come, Charles,’ Fournier says, in English this time. ‘Make your bow.’

Charles bows as his mother taught him, low and sweeping as she said the gentlemen did at Versailles as the King passed by. When he was little and he bowed to her like that, his mother would clap her hands. Once she gave him a grape coated with sugar.

Mr Savill inclines his head in acknowledgement. Charles thinks his manner lacks entirely the distinction of a French gentleman. He is rough and clumsy. He is dressed like a tradesman or a lawyer.

‘Oh!’ his mother would say when talking of men like this, ‘but he is such an oaf!’

‘I am part of your English family,’ Mr Savill says slowly, also in English. He pauses. ‘Do you understand what I say?’

Charles stares at the wall behind Mr Savill’s head at a particular stripe in the wallpaper that runs through a small brown stain where the damp comes through the wall.

‘Do you understand?’ Mr Savill repeats. ‘Nod your head if you do.’

Mr Savill waits a moment and then repeats the question in French, which is perfectly comprehensible though his accent is quite barbarous, worse than Dr Gohlis’s.

‘Nod if you understand me,’ Mr Savill says once more.

Charles sees the trap before him: he knows that it is possible to coax answers without words, and that these may do just as much harm as answers with words. He lets his eyes drift up to the cornice of the room. He senses the attention of the two men on him, feels the weight of it, feels the pressure of their impatience.

Time passes. The weight lifts, the pressure relaxes.

‘So,’ Fournier says in his normal voice. ‘There you have it, sir. A neat philosophical conundrum, as the doctor puts it. But undeniably inconvenient for the rest of us.’

‘And indeed for Charles himself,’ says Mr Savill, his face twisting, as if with pain.

‘Let us have fresh coffee,’ Fournier says. ‘Ring for the servant, Charles. Then you may leave us, but do not go far away.’

The boy does as he is told. As he is leaving the room, he looks back. They are watching him, Monsieur Fournier and Mr Savill, and he wonders what they see.

‘You see?’ Fournier says. ‘He understands simple instructions and sometimes will execute them.’

Mr Savill nods. For a moment, he stops frowning. He turns his head and looks straight at Charles. The scar crinkles. He is smiling.

Chapter Sixteen

As Charles closed the door, Savill stood up and walked to the window, as if by doing so he could walk away from the pain. He rubbed the condensation on the glass with the heel of his hand to make a peephole. The world outside sharpened and came into partial focus, streaked and distorted by trails of moisture.

The rain had stopped. The sky was a pale, duck-egg blue. The dining room overlooked a lawn silvered with a coating of dew. Beyond the grass was the darker green of shrubberies and trees that marched up the slope of the valley towards wooded hills. Further still, another line of hills smudged the horizon.