Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2014

Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Cover photographs © Julian Elliott / Getty Images (street); Henry Steadman (boy)

Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical fact, are the work of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007506576

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2014 ISBN: 9780007506590

Version: 2017-06-02

Dedication

For James

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Keep Reading for The Ashes of London

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Say nothing. Not a word to anyone. Whatever you see. Whatever you hear. Do you understand? Say nothing. Ever.

Tip-tap. Like cracking a walnut.

Now and always Charles sees the blood. It runs down his cheek and soaks into his shirt. He licks his dry lips and tastes it, salty and metallic and forbidden.

He has fallen as he ran down the steep stairs. He’s lying on his back. He looks up. It is raining blood from a black sky striped with yellow. Blood glistens in the light of the lantern on the table.

There’s shouting and banging outside.

Inside, the blood is crying out. It’s screaming and shouting and grunting. The sound twists through his skull. It cuts into bone and splinters into a thousand daggers that draw more blood.

He scrambles to his feet. His shoes are by the door. He slips his feet into them.

There are no words for this, all he has heard and seen. There are no words for anything. There must never be any words.

Awake and asleep, here and anywhere, now and always. Never any words.

Charles lifts the latch and drags open the heavy door. No more words.

Hush now. Say nothing.

Tip-tap.

Charles darts out of the cottage and pulls the door shut. The cobbled yard is in darkness. So are the workshops and the big house beyond. Above the rooftops, though, the air flickers orange and yellow with the light of torches. The noise is deafening. He wants to cover his ears.

The tocsin is ringing. There are other bells. Their jangling fills the night and mingles with the host of unnatural sounds. The street on the far side of the house is as noisy as by day – much noisier, with shouts and screams, with barks and explosions, with the clatter of hooves and the grating of iron-rimmed wheels.

Someone begins to knock at a door – not with a hand or a knocker. These blows are slow and purposeful. They make the air itself tremble. Glass shatters. Someone is shrieking.

Wood splinters. They are breaking down the door of the main house. In a matter of minutes they will be in the yard.

Charles stumbles towards the big gates beyond the cottage. Two heavy bars hold them shut, sealing the back of the yard. In one leaf is a little low wicket.

At night the wicket is secured by two bolts. He fumbles for them in the darkness, only to find that they are already open.

Of course they are.

He pushes the gate outward. Nothing happens. Locked, not bolted? In desperation he tugs it towards him. The gate slams into him with such force that he falls on the slippery cobbles.

The cottage door is opening.

Panic surges through him. He is on his feet again. The lane outside the gate is in darkness. He leaps through the wicket. The lane beyond runs parallel to the street. The warm air stinks of decay. The city is so hot it has gone mad.

In the confusion, he is dimly aware that the hammering from the house has stopped. There are lights on the other side of the yard. Shutters are flung open. The windows fill with the light of hell.

Chains rattle, bolts slide back. A dog is barking with deep, excited bellows.

Through the open wicket he sees the house door opening. He glimpses the black shape of a huge dog in the doorway.

Charles covers his mouth with his hand to keep the words inside from spilling out. He turns and runs.

There is so much confusion in the world that no one gives Charles a second glance. They push past him. They cuff him out of their way as if swatting a fly.

He is of no interest to them. He is nothing. He is glad to be nothing. He wants to be less than nothing.

He shrinks back into a doorway. He sees blood everywhere, in the gutters, on the faces and clothes of the men and women hurrying past him, daubed on the wall opposite.

At the corner of the street, the crowd has surrounded a coach. They are pulling out the man and the woman inside and throwing out their possessions. A hatbox falls open and the hat rolls out. A man stamps on it.

The woman is crying, great ragged sobs. The gentleman is quite silent. His eyes are closed.

The baker’s assistant, who is a burly fellow half a head taller than everyone else, tugs at the woman’s dress. He paws at the neck. The thin fabric rips.

Charles slips from the doorway. He does not know where he is going but his feet know the way. He has nothing with him except the shirt he was sleeping in, his breeches and the shoes on his feet.

The sign of the Golden Pheasant hangs above the shop that sells poultry. Someone has draped a petticoat over it.

Old Barbon, the porter of the house five doors down, is lying on the ground. He is pouring wine into his mouth and the liquid runs over his cheeks. Barbon once gave him a plum so sweet and juicy that Marie said it came from the angels.

Madame Pial, who keeps the wine shop in the next street, is dragging a sack along the road. She has lost her hat and her cap. Her grey hair flows in a greasy tide over her shoulders.

The Rue de Richelieu is seething with people. Their faces are twisted out of shape. They are no longer human. They are ghouls in a nightmare. Charles pushes through them in the direction of the river. The street ends at the Rue Saint-Honoré. He means to turn left and cross the river at the Pont Royal. But the crowd is even denser here, clustering around the Tuileries like wasps round a saucer of jam. He will not be able to force his way through.

Besides, lying on the road not three yards away from him is one of the King’s Swiss Guards. The man has no head and he has lost his boots and breeches. His entrails coil out of his belly, gleaming in the torchlight, still twitching.

Charles slows. He weaves eastwards towards the Île du Palais. He crosses the river at the Pont Neuf. National Guards are on both sides of the river and also on the Île du Palais itself. But they are taking no notice of the people who stream north over the river towards the Tuileries. He slips among them, against the flow of the tide. He smells sweat and excitement and anger.

There are fewer people on the Rive Gauche. But the noise is almost as bad. The sound of artillery and musket fire near the Tuileries. The screams and shouts. The clatter of wheels and hooves.

On the Quai d’Orsay and the Quai Theatines people are watching the battle on the other side of the river as if it is a firework display.

In the Rue Dauphine, his mind clears, not much but enough to realize where he is going. He has been here only once before, and then it was daylight and everything was normal. It takes him nearly an hour to find his way, casting to and fro in the near darkness, avoiding the crowds, avoiding the people who try to sweep him into their lives.

At last, not far from the Café Corazza, he stumbles on the narrow mouth of the alley. It leads to a paved court. The only light comes from an oil lamp on a second-floor windowsill. The lamp casts a faint dirty-yellow fragrance. The court has trapped the sun’s warmth during the day. It is even hotter than the street.

For a moment he listens. He hears nothing nearby except the scramble of rats, a sound grown so familiar he barely notices it.

He finds the door with the help of his fingertips not his eyes.

The wood is old and scarred and as dry as a desert. Charles hammers on it until his knuckles bleed. He hammers on it until it opens.

Marie is not much taller than he is. She is almost as wide as she is tall. She looks like a bull in a faded blue dress and carries with her a smell of sweat, garlic and woodsmoke, mingled with a sour, milky quality that is hers alone. Her smell is as familiar to Charles as anything in the world.

She draws him over the threshold and squeezes him in her arms so tightly that he finds it hard to breathe.

‘What happened?’ she says. ‘Where is Madame?’

She asks him questions over and over again and he cannot answer any of them. In the end she gives up. She brings water and a cloth and rinses the blood from his face and hands.

The only light in the room comes from the stump of a tallow candle and a rushlight on the unlit stove. That is why she does not see the clotted patches of blood in his hair. But her fingers find them. She makes the smacking noise with her lips that signifies her disapproval of something. With sudden violence, she strips off his breeches and his stained shirt. She drags him, white and naked, into the court.

There is a pump in one corner. She holds him under it with one hand and sluices water over him with the other. She runs her fingers through his wet hair, over every surface and into every crack and cranny of his slippery body. She rinses him again. With a hand on his neck, she pushes him in front of her into the room and bars the door behind them.

Despite the heat, Charles is shivering. She wraps him in a blanket, makes him sit on a stool and lean against the wall. She brings him water in a beaker made of wood.

He drinks greedily. She is humming quietly. She often does this, the same three notes, la-la-la, low and soft, over and over again.

He is glad that Luc is not there. Luc is Marie’s brother. He is a kitchen porter. He has only one eye, owing to a frightful accident in the slaughterhouse where he used to work. Though she did not witness it herself, Marie has described the accident to him many many times in graphic detail.

Charles’s one visit to this house, nearly a year ago, was so that he might see in person the angry red crater that was the site of Luc’s lost left eye. It was not as impressive in reality as in imagination. For the sake of his hosts, he acted out a polite pantomime of shock and horror. In truth, however, he was disappointed.

When Marie took him home again, he left a sou on the stove, because he knew that she and Luc were poor. Marie was Charles’s nurse when he was very young and later stayed as a maid. But then she was dismissed and the boy cried himself to sleep for nearly a week.

Now the brother and sister live in one room. Their bed is in a curtained alcove by the stove.

When Charles has had all the water he can drink, she brings in the chamber pot and watches him urinate. Afterwards she makes him kneel by the bed. She kneels beside him and says the prayer to the Virgin that she always says before he goes to sleep.

He knows that he is meant to join in. When he does not, she looks sharply at him and pokes him in the ribs. When she begins the prayer again, he moves his lips, mouthing shapes which have no words to them.

She watches him closely but does not seem to mind. Perhaps she does not know the difference between words that have shapes and words that do not.

Marie puts him into bed, blows out the candle and climbs in beside him. The mattress sinks beneath her weight. His body has no choice but to sink towards her and to mould its contours to hers.

It is very hot and it grows hotter. Now he is big he does not care for the way she smells or the way she looms over him like a mountain of flesh.

Soon she drifts into sleep. She snores and twitches.

The snoring stops. ‘Tell me,’ she whispers. ‘What happened? Where is Madame?’

He does not answer. He must never answer. Say nothing. Not a word.

Marie prods him again with her finger. ‘What happened?’

Tip-tap. Like cracking a walnut.

When he does not answer, she sighs noisily and turns her head away.

He listens to her breathing. He closes his eyes but then he sees what he does not wish to see. He opens them again and stares into the night.

Luc does not come back for three days. When he does, he is drunk with blood and brandy. The single eye is bloodshot.

He does not see the boy at first. He calls for wine. He calls for food. Marie tries to press her brother into the chair but he resists.

Charles is in the alcove, in the bed. He rolls a little to the left, hoping to conceal himself behind the half-drawn curtains. But Luc’s single eye catches the movement.

‘What the devil is that?’ he says in a voice so hoarse he can barely raise it above a whisper.

‘Madame von Streicher’s boy. He came the other night.’

‘Who brought him?’

‘No one.’

Luc advances towards the alcove and stares at Charles, who looks back at him because he doesn’t know what else to do.

‘Where’s your mother?’ Luc demands.

The boy says nothing.

‘I don’t know,’ Marie says. ‘He was covered with blood.’

‘Take him back. We don’t want him here.’

‘I tried,’ Marie says. ‘I sent a message to the Rue de Grenelle but Madame isn’t there any more. The concierge said she and the boy moved out a month ago.’

‘They are traitors,’ Luc says suddenly. ‘She’s been arrested. If we shelter him, they’ll arrest us too. You know where that ends.’ Luc makes a blade of his right hand and chops it down on the palm of his left.

He means the guillotine. Charles has heard his mother and Dr Gohlis talking about the machine, and Dr Gohlis said that it is a humane way to execute criminals. But, he said, the people do not like it because it is too swift and too clean a way to die. They prefer the old ways – hanging on wooden gallows, or death by sword or breaking on the wheel. They last longer, Dr Gohlis said, and they are more entertaining.

‘They’ve set up the machine at the Tuileries now. At the Place du Carrousel.’

Marie pours her brother wine. She stands, hands on hips, in front of the alcove, with the boy behind her.

Luc takes a long swallow of wine and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Throw him out. In the gutter. Anywhere.’

‘I can’t. He’s only a child.’

‘If they find out he’s here, it’ll be enough to bring us before the Tribunal.’

‘But he couldn’t hurt a—’

Luc throws the beaker of wine at his sister, catching her on the face. She gives a cry and turns. Charles sees the blood on her cheek.

‘You will do as I say,’ Luc says. ‘Or I’ll break every bone in his body, and in yours.’

Chapter Two

Marie holds tightly to Charles’s arm. She pulls him from the shadowy, urine-scented safety of the alleyway leading to the court and into the crowded street.

She tugs him along, jerking his arm to hurry him up. He is a fish on a line, pulled through a river of people.

It is the first time he has been outside since the night he came to Marie’s. Everything is brighter, louder and noisier than it should be – the clothes, the cockades, the soldiers, the checkpoints, the swaying, seething parties of men and women. There is urgency in the air, an invisible miasma that touches everyone. He wants to be part of it.

Before they came out, Marie combed his hair. He is wearing his shirt and breeches, which she washed the day before, though her best efforts could not remove all the blood from them. They do not go north towards the river but west. They pass Saint-Sulpice and turn into the Rue du Bac.

Marie drags him across the street, threading their way through the coaches and wagons by force of personality and a steady stream of oaths. She stops outside a great house with black gates, studded with iron.

The black gates are shut. Marie mutters under her breath and tugs on the bell handle with her free hand. She does not let go of Charles with the other hand. She grips his wrist so tightly he fears it will snap.

The bell clangs on the other side of the gates but no one comes. Marie bounces up and down on her little feet. She rings the bell again. A passer-by jostles Charles, wrenching him from Marie’s grasp. He sprawls in the gutter and grazes his knees. Marie swears at the man and hauls him to his feet. She pulls the bell a third time, for longer and harder than before.

A shutter slides back in the wicket. A man’s eyes and nose are revealed in the small rectangle.

‘The house is shut up,’ he says. ‘Go away.’

‘Where’s Monsieur the Count?’ Marie demands.

‘Gone. All gone.’

The shutter slams home. Marie rings the bell again. She hammers on the door. Nothing happens.

She knocks again. By now a crowd has gathered, watchful and silent.

Marie turns from the gates and asks the bystanders what they think they’re staring at. Such is the force of her authority, of her anger, that they drift away, shamefaced.

Muttering under her breath, Marie leads Charles away from the gates in the direction of the Grand École. He starts to cry.

A slim gentleman is coming towards them on foot. His left leg drags behind him. He is dressed plainly in a dark green coat. Charles recognizes him and so does Marie.

She leaps forward into the man’s path and pushes the boy in front of her. ‘Monseigneur!’ she cries. ‘Monseigneur!’

He stops, frowning, his face suddenly wary. ‘Hush, hush – I am plain Monsieur Fournier now. You know that.’

‘Monsieur, you came to Madame von Streicher’s.’

He frowns at Marie. ‘I am sorry. There is nothing I can do for you. Whoever you are.’

‘Monsieur.’ She shoves the boy forward, so forcefully that he bumps against Monsieur Fournier’s arm. ‘This is Madame’s son. This is Charles. You must remember him.’

Monsieur Fournier has large brown eyes that open very wide as if life is a matter of endless astonishment to him.

‘This?’

‘Yes, monsieur, I swear it. On my life.’

Fournier motions them to move to one side with him. They stand by the outer wall of the great house. The passers-by ebb around them.

Fournier takes Charles’s chin in his hand and angles it upwards. ‘Yes, by God, you’re right.’ He bends closer, bringing his head almost on a level with the boy’s. ‘What happened? Are you hurt?’

Charles says nothing.

‘He won’t speak, monsieur,’ Marie says.

‘Of course he can speak.’ Monsieur Fournier touches Charles’s shoulder with a long white forefinger. ‘You know me, don’t you?’

‘He won’t say anything, monsieur. Not since that night.’

‘Are you saying he was actually there? When …?’ His voice tails away, rising into an unspoken question.

‘Have you seen Madame?’ Marie says. ‘Is she …?’ She runs out of words, too.

Fournier looks at her. ‘You weren’t there yourself?’

‘No, monsieur. I was at my – my brother’s house. Charles came to me in the night. He was …’

‘He was what?’ demands Fournier.

‘There was blood all over him.’ She paws at the faded stains on Charles’s shirt. ‘See? Everywhere. On his clothes, in his hair.’

‘Dear God.’

Her voice rises. ‘He won’t even tell me what happened. He won’t tell me anything. I can’t keep him at home. My brother will throw him out.’

‘You did well to bring him.’ Monsieur Fournier takes out a handkerchief and wipes his face. ‘We can’t talk here. Follow me.’

He sets off in the direction he came from, walking so rapidly despite his limp that Charles and Marie have to break into a trot to keep up. He takes the next turning, a lane running along the side of the house. There are no windows on the ground floor, only small ones high up in the wall, far above Charles’s head. These windows are protected by heavy grilles of iron bars, painted black like the gates.

They turn another corner into a narrow street parallel to the Rue du Bac. Here is another, much smaller gate set in the wall of the house.

Monsieur Fournier looks up and down the lane. There is no one else about. He knocks twice on the gate, pauses, knocks once, pauses again and then knocks twice again.

The shutter slides back. Nobody speaks. On the other side of the gate there is a rattling of bars. The key turns. The gate opens – not to its full extent, merely enough to allow a man to pass through.

Fournier is the first to enter. Marie pushes the boy after him. As she does so she ruffles his hair.

They are in a cobbled yard with a well in one corner. A fat old man in a dirty brown coat stares open-mouthed at them. Fournier limps towards the great grey cliff of the house. The old man jerks with his head towards the house, which means that Charles must follow.

Charles breaks into a run. Behind him, he hears the gate closing.

It is only when he is inside the house, when he is following Monsieur Fournier up a long flight of stone stairs that he realizes Marie is no longer there. She has stayed on the other side of the black gate.

The room is almost as large as a church. Despite the sunshine outside, it is gloomy, for the shutters are still across the windows. Light filters through the cracks. One of the shutters is slightly open and a bar of sunlight streams across the carpet to a huge desk.

The desk is made of a dark wood ornamented with gold which sparkles in the sunshine. Its top is as big as his mother’s bed and it has many drawers. It is covered in papers – some in piles, some lying loose as if blown by a gust of wind.

Behind the desk, facing into the room, is a stout gentleman whose face is in shadow. He looks up as Monsieur Fournier enters, and Charles recognizes him.

‘I thought you’d be halfway to—’ The gentleman sees Charles behind Monsieur Fournier. He breaks off what he is saying.

‘This is more important,’ Fournier says.

‘What the devil do you want with that boy?’

Fournier advances into the room with Charles trailing behind him. One of the piles of paper is weighted down with a pistol. Charles wishes that he were back with Marie, lying in her bed against her great flank and smelling her strange, unlovely smell.

‘You don’t understand. He’s Madame von Streicher’s son.’

Charles knows that this man is very important. He is Count de Quillon, the owner of this house, the Hotel de Quillon, and so much else. The Minister, Maman says, the godson of the King and once the King’s friend. He sometimes came to see Maman, though more often he would send a servant with a message and Maman would put on one of her best gowns and go away in his great coach.

Only now, when the Count rests his elbows on the desk, does the sunlight bring his face alive. He is a broad, heavy man, older than Fournier, with a small chin, a big nose and a high complexion.

‘This is Augusta’s son?’ the Count says. ‘This? Are you sure? Absolutely sure?’

‘Quite sure, despite the dirt and the rags.’

‘How does he come here?’

‘He ran away and went to an old servant’s. She brought him a moment ago.’

‘So was he with his mother when—’

Fournier interrupts: ‘I don’t know. He was covered in blood when he turned up at the old woman’s house.’

‘It is of the first importance that we discover what happened. Where is the servant? She must know something.’

‘She ran off as soon as we came through the gate.’

The men are talking as if Charles is not there. He might be invisible. Or he might not even exist at all. He cannot grasp this idea. Nevertheless, part of him quite likes it.

‘Come here, boy,’ says the Count.

Charles steps up to the desk. He makes himself stand very straight.

‘What happened at your house that night? The – the night you ran away?’

Charles does not speak.

‘Don’t be shy. I can’t abide a timid boy. Answer me. Who else was there? I must know.’

‘The woman said he simply won’t speak,’ says Fournier. ‘No reason why he shouldn’t, of course – he’s perfectly capable of it. I remember him chattering away ten to the dozen.’

‘Answer me!’ the Count roared, rearing up in his chair. ‘You will answer me.’

Tears run down Charles’s cheeks. He says nothing.

Fournier shifts his weight from his left leg. ‘Give the lad time to get his bearings,’ he suggests. ‘Gohlis can see him.’

‘We don’t have time for all that,’ the Count says. He adds rather petulantly, ‘Anyway, he’s not some lad or other – his name is Charles. I should know.’ He beckons Charles closer and studies the boy’s face. ‘Were you there? Did you see what happened to—’

‘My friend, I think this—’

The Count waves Fournier away. ‘Did you see what happened to your mother? Did you see who came?’

Charles stares at the pistol on the pile of papers. Is it loaded? If you cocked it and put it to your head and pulled the trigger, then would everything stop, just like that? Everything, including himself?

‘It is most important that you tell us,’ the Count says, raising his voice. ‘A matter of life and death. Answer me, Charles. Who was there?’

But Charles is still thinking about the pistol. If he shot himself, would St Peter take one look at him and send him down to the fires of hell? Or would there simply be nothing at all, a great emptiness with no people in it, living or dead?

‘Oh for God’s sake!’ the Count snaps.

The boy recoils as if he has been slapped.

‘Very well, then.’ The Count tugs the bell pull behind him. ‘We’ll talk to him when he’s past his absurd shyness. Someone will look after him and give him some food.’

Fournier rests a hand on Charles’s shoulder. ‘But what about later? If we leave?’

‘Then he comes with us.’ Monsieur de Quillon bends his great head over his papers. ‘Naturally.’

Chapter Three

Charles is placed in the care of an elderly, half-blind woman. She lives in a room under the roof over the kitchen wing. Opening out of her chamber is a smaller one, which has a barred window. This is where Charles sleeps.

On the second night, he has bad dreams and he wets the bed.

On the third day, Monsieur Fournier summons him. He is in a salon overlooking the great courtyard at the heart of the Hotel de Quillon.

He is not alone. Dr Gohlis is there. He is another gentleman who used to call on Maman in the old days. He is young and stooping, a German from Hanover. He has cold hands.

In heavily accented French, the doctor asks Charles his name, and Charles does not answer. He asks Charles how old he is. Then he asks exactly the same questions in English and German, and all the while Charles stares out of the window at the weeds in the courtyard and imagines the words rising into the sky like startled birds.

Dr Gohlis examines him, looking at his teeth and poking at his belly with his forefinger. He walks behind Charles and claps his hands, making Charles twitch.

‘There is no physical cause for his silence that I can see. Everything is perfectly normal,’ he says. ‘You tell me he eats and moves his bowels. I could try purging or bleeding, but I doubt it would answer.’

‘He has sustained a great shock,’ Fournier says, throwing an unexpected smile at Charles. ‘Could that have disturbed his faculties and made him mute?’

‘Indeed, sir – that may very well be the case. If the hypothesis is correct, then it follows that the best course of treatment may be another shock. If one shock has removed his powers of speech, then a second may restore them.’

‘They say he wet the bed the other night.’

‘Really? Was he beaten for it?’

‘I do not know.’

‘If it happens again, I would advise it, for his own good. He will achieve nothing without discipline.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Monsieur Fournier says after a moment. ‘I won’t detain you any longer.’

Dr Gohlis bows and leaves the room. He does not look at Charles, who is still standing by the window.

As the door closes, Fournier opens a bureau. He takes a sheet of paper from one of its drawers and a quill from another. He puts them on the flap and uncovers the inkstand. He places a gilt chair in front of the bureau.

‘Sit, dear boy. Take the quill.’

Charles obeys. He dips the pen in the ink without being asked.

‘Good,’ says Fournier. ‘Your mother told me that you are an apt student. Pray begin by writing your name.’

Charles bends his head. He writes. The quill scratches on the heavy paper.

‘Now write my name.’

Charles writes.

‘Excellent. And now – write the names of those who visited your mother in your cottage in the Rue de Richelieu.’

The pen moves again. The tip of the feather brushes Charles’s chin.

Monsieur Fournier comes to stand at his shoulder. ‘Let me see what you have written.’

Charles hands him the sheet of paper, the ink still glistening. He has answered each question with lines that go up and down, across and diagonally. They are black marks on white paper. They reveal nothing other than themselves.

The following morning, Charles wakes with the light.

Before he opens his eyes, he is aware of rustles and small movements which he thinks must be rats and mice, which come and go at will and treat the place as their own. He opens his eyes.

Without warning, his stomach gives a painful twitch as if someone has punched him there. He gasps and sits up in bed.

A boy is standing beside the window, his outline clearly visible in the light filtering through the cracks of the shutters. He is smaller than Charles and he is very still. He has his back to the room. He stands upright, his shoulders squared like a soldier on parade.

Just for an instant – for a hundredth of a second – Charles feels joy. He is not alone.

His feelings are no sooner there than they are gone. His lips move. They form the words: Who are you? But the words have no sound so the boy cannot hear them.

Charles is afraid as much as excited now. He swings his legs out of bed.

The boy does not move.

The boards are cold. Draughts swirl around Charles’s ankles and rise up his legs under his nightshirt. He shivers, partly from fear.

He takes a step nearer the window, nearer the boy. Then another, and another. Between each step he pauses. It is like the game he used to play with his mother when he was very, very young.

The strange boy does not even twitch. Step by step, Charles draws nearer to him. Still the boy does not move. He has been turned to stone, Charles thinks, he is a statue. He feels pity, though he knows the boy cannot really be like this; but, if he were, surely that would be even worse than losing your voice?

Charles takes a deep breath, stretches out a hand and touches the boy’s shoulder. It is cold, a little damp and hard – hard like wood, not stone. Charles walks around him and opens one of the shutters. The light from the window falls on the boy’s face.

Or rather – the light falls on the place where the face should have been.

The boy’s eye sockets are empty. There is nothing but a hole where the nose should be. The cheeks are sunken. The lips are almost gone. He still has some of his teeth. He is grinning. He will always grin because he can do nothing else.

Charles draws in a long, shuddering breath. His face contorted, he breathes out: a silent scream.

The door creaks. A current of cold air sweeps into the room.

Dr Gohlis is on the threshold.

‘I see you have found my little friend,’ he says in his strange, thick voice. ‘His name is Louis.’

As he speaks, he comes closer. Charles cannot move.

‘Who knows who this boy was?’ the doctor says. ‘Were you aware that before the Revolution, the poor were so desperate that they sent their children to prison – they sold them on the streets – they disposed of them like unwanted kittens?’

Charles stares at Dr Gohlis over the boy’s shoulder. He wishes with all his heart that the boy was still alive, that he was not alone with the doctor.

‘But even dead boys may be worth a few sous. In life they were quite useless to society. But in death, the lucky ones are granted the chance to serve a higher good.’

Dr Gohlis is standing by Louis’s shoulder now. He throws back the second shutter. More light floods over the boy. Charles covers his mouth with his hands when he sees what has been done.

‘So their parents take the money and drink themselves senseless in the nearest wine shop,’ the doctor continues. ‘And a man of science takes the boy.’ He stretches out a surprisingly long arm and grips the right wrist of the figure. ‘The dead boy. The man of science conveys the boy to another man, a man skilled in the art of flaying skin from a body. Believe me, it is not easy to do it properly, to do it well. It is one thing to remove the skin. It is quite another thing to do it without harming what lies beneath.’

The doctor releases the wrist. His fingertips play on the arm of the boy, patting it gently, rising from the wrist up to the elbow up to the shoulder and then to the neck. He points at a place on the neck.

‘See? This is the line of the great artery which carries blood to the heart. This is bone, here, and here the humerus, and here we have the scapula.’ The hand flutters higher. ‘Note the cheekbone. Do you see how some of the skin is still attached? The man who did this was truly an artist.’

The doctor’s hand sweeps down and grips Charles’s neck. Charles tries to pull away but Dr Gohlis tightens his hold. His hand is as cold as a dead thing, colder than the flayed boy.

‘After this boy was flayed, shall I tell you what happened then? He was covered in plaster, every inch of him. When the plaster was dry, they cut it open – and there is a mould of the dead boy. When you have a mould, you can make many copies. The copies are painted, in this case by another artist who is trained in the work of portraying what lies beneath, the inner mysteries under the skin. See how the muscle and tendon and bone stand out in their proper colours. Is it not a marvel?’

His grip is painfully tight. He forces Charles to move around the boy and to come closer. Now he is looking at the boy’s back.

‘These poor simulacra of humanity are called écorchés,’ Dr Gohlis says, ‘the flayed ones. Isn’t that droll? They assist in the instruction of students of medicine and drawing who are obliged to learn about the inward architecture of the human body. Observe.’

He picks up Charles’s right hand with his own left hand. Charles wills himself not to resist, not to pull away. The doctor forces him to extend his index finger. He runs the finger down the spine of the écorché.

‘Here are the cervical vertebrae,’ the doctor announces. ‘And below, in the middle of the spine, here are the thoracic ones. See the natural curve of the spine. Is it not elegant? And further below still, here are the lumbar vertebrae. They are much larger than the cervical ones, are they not? That is because they need to be, for they carry a greater burden.’

The doctor lowers his head to the same level as Charles’s.

‘You see?’ he says. ‘You will never forget this lesson, will you? Not while you live and breathe. You will always remember what lies beneath.’

He stares into Charles’s face. Charles stares back and thinks of nothing but the blank grey sky beyond the window.

‘Above all, you should draw this conclusion from it. You should remember that a boy who is useless in life may at least be useful in death.’ Dr Gohlis releases Charles’s neck and pushes him against the écorché boy. ‘You are no use at all to us if you will not talk.’

As he is speaking, Dr Gohlis moves towards the door. He pauses on the threshold.

‘I should examine him carefully if I were you. If you do not find your voice, you may be like that yourself one day.’

Chapter Four

On the very night before the letter arrived, Savill thought of Augusta. He had not thought of her for months, perhaps years. These were the dog days of the summer. Perhaps that had something to do with it, for the heat bred unhealthy desires. The long scar on his right cheek itched.

Before getting into bed, he had tied back the curtains and opened the window as wide as it would go. The smell from the cesspit wafted up from the yard beneath. These houses in Nightingale Lane were as old as Good Queen Bess, and so was their sanitation.

It was not the heat alone that kept him awake. He had the toothache, a savage sensation that drilled into the right-hand side of his jaw and sent tendrils of discomfort among the roots of the surrounding teeth. He had taken drops that had blunted the pain. But they did not send him to a comfortable oblivion: instead, they pinned his body to the bed while leaving his mind free and restless, skimming above the surface of sleep.

London was never quiet, even on the darkest night. He heard the watch calling the hours, the cries of drunken passers-by, the hammer-blows of hooves and the rumble of distant wagons bringing their loads through the night to Smithfield and Covent Garden.

The heat warmed the fancies of his brain to an unhealthy temperature and stirred into life the half-buried memory of another hot night. He had supped with fellow clerks at the American Department and returned late to the lodgings on the wrong side of Hill Street. It was their first married home. The apartments were too expensive for them but the address was genteel and Augusta had argued that a man did not rise in the world without seeming worthy to rise; and nor did his wife.

He found her sitting on the ottoman at the foot of the bed. There were two tall candles on the mantel. The edges of the room were dark, the corners populated with shifting shadows. But Augusta herself was coated with a soft golden glow.

She wore a simple white nightgown, so loose at the neck that it revealed most of her smooth shoulders. Her hair was down. She smiled up at him and held up her hand. The movement dislodged her gown and he glimpsed the swell of her breasts and the darkness between them.

This was how it had been in the beginning of their marriage: Savill had revelled in the contrast between Augusta by day and Augusta by night – the one icily elegant, ambitious to the point of ruthlessness, calculating yet so strangely foolish; and the other, everything a man could desire to find in his bed, and more. Even when he grew to dislike her, which did not take long, she retained her ability to excite him.

‘I have an appetite,’ she said that night as she sat astride him, her belly already swollen with Lizzie. ‘And you shall feed me.’

The excitement drained away from him, leaving a residue of bitterness, of regret, that mingled with the dreary ache of his tooth. The drops were making his head swim and they had given him a pain in his stomach. His eyes were full of sand. He felt nauseous but lacked the strength to roll out of bed and find the chamber pot.

At times like this, in these long, sleepless nights, Savill wondered whether he, too, had been to blame for what had happened. But that was folly. Memories are not real, he told himself, they are little more than waking dreams; and there is no guilt in dreams, neither hers nor mine, and no betrayals, either.

For are we not innocent when we dream?

The next morning, the servant brought up the letter when Savill was at breakfast with his sister and Lizzie. He noticed it had been franked by an obliging Member of Parliament in lieu of postage. He broke the heavy seal. As soon as he unfolded the letter he recognized the handwriting as that of a man who no doubt included many Members of Parliament among his intimate acquaintance.

The women were watching him. He read the letter twice. The questions crowded into his mind but he had long ago schooled his face not to betray his feelings.

Savill looked up. ‘I shall not dine with you today after all. I am obliged to go out of town on business.’ He registered the disappointment spreading over Lizzie’s face, then watched her instantly suppressing it. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There’s always tomorrow.’

Why now? he wondered. Why a summons to Vardells, not Westminster? And again, and above all, why should Rampton want to see me now?

‘She is dead.’

Twelve feet above Savill’s head, plaster putti writhed, a pair of them in each corner of the salon. Each set of twins were shackled together with garlands. The infant boys had short, stubby limbs and plump, inflated bodies. Their eyes were sightless blanks, their lips slightly parted.

Give it time, Savill thought. He imagined the gilt and the whitewash fading and cracking, staining with candle grease, and the plaster crumbling and flaking from the ceiling: plaster snow.

‘Did you hear me, sir?’ Mr Rampton said.

The grandfather clock chimed. Savill counted the quarters and then the stroke of the hour: five.

‘Dead,’ Mr Rampton repeated, this time more loudly. ‘Augusta is dead.’

Savill’s eyes dropped slowly to the marble chimney piece. On one side of the fireplace was a bronze man with bulging muscles restraining a rearing horse with one arm while waving to something or someone with the other. What in heaven’s name was it all for?

Mr Rampton coughed. ‘Augusta. My niece, sir.’

Savill looked at him. ‘My wife, sir.’

Silence settled like dust in the air. Savill looked across the room at Rampton, who was sitting in the big wing armchair on the left of the fireplace. The chair was angled to catch the light from the two tall windows. Beside the chair was a lectern on wheels with candles on either side of the slope and a sturdy quarto, the pages held open with clips.

Rampton scratched the fingertips of his left hand on the arm of the chair. His face was wrinkled but still ruddy with the impression of good health. He looked smaller than he had been. Perhaps age was shrinking him as his fortune increased. The Lord giveth, as Savill’s father used to say with a certain grim satisfaction, and the Lord taketh away.

‘Of course,’ Rampton was saying, ‘your unhappy wife, Mr Savill, despite everything. And it is a cause for sorrow that the unfortunate woman is dead at last. We must not judge her. We may safely leave that to a higher power.’

Rampton was not a big man but he made good use of what he had. He wore a sober grey coat and very fine linen. His hair was his own but he still wore it powdered, a political statement in these changing times: a public demonstration of his attachment to old virtues and old loyalties. The heels of his shoes were higher than was usual for gentlemen’s shoes. He looked every inch a statesman, albeit a smallish one, which was a pretty fair description of what he was.

‘The poor woman,’ he went on. ‘Alas, she paid the price for flouting the laws of God and man.’

The rectangle of sky outside the nearer window was cloudless, a deep rich blue. Against this backdrop danced black specks, sweeping, diving and climbing with extraordinary rapidity. The swallows and the martins had begun their evening exercise. They would be vanishing soon as they did every year, though where they went, no man knew.

‘Those confounded swallows,’ Rampton said. ‘You cannot begin to comprehend the mess they make on the terrace.’ He too was staring out of the window; he too was glad of an excuse to think of something other than Augusta. ‘They nest under the eaves of the house or in the stables – I’ve tried for three years to get rid of them. But wherever they nest, they use my terrace as their privy.’

‘Where?’ Savill said.

‘What?’ Rampton turned from the window, away from the swallows, from one annoyance to another. ‘Paris. The foolish, foolish girl.’

‘How did you hear, sir?’

‘Through the Embassy. It happened just over a week ago.’

‘When the mob stormed the Tuileries?’

‘Yes. By all accounts the whole of Paris was delivered up to them. Riot, carnage, chaos. It beggars comprehension, sir, that such a civilized city should sink so low. The poor King and his family are prisoners. Tell me, when did you last hear from her?’

‘Five years ago,’ Savill said. ‘A little more. She wrote for money.’

‘And you sent it?’

‘Yes.’

Rampton grunted. ‘There was no necessity for you to do that.’

‘Perhaps not. But I did.’

‘On the other hand,’ Rampton said, ‘perhaps it was for the best. If you hadn’t, she might have been obliged to return to England.’

‘You mean she might still be alive?’

‘Would that really have been better? For her or for anyone else? For Elizabeth? After all, you could not have taken her in, even if you desired to, and she could not have been received anywhere.’

Rampton had lost all his teeth. As a result his voice had changed. Once it had been precise and hard edged, with every consonant squared off like a block of ashlar. Now the words emerged in a soft slurry of sound. No doubt he had a set of teeth, but he had not troubled to put them in for Savill.

Savill said, ‘She was in Geneva when she last wrote. She had parted from von Streicher, though she kept his name for appearance’s sake.’ The words still hurt when he said them aloud, but only his pride. ‘She said she had set up house with an Irish lady and they planned to take in pupils.’

‘Pupils? You did not believe her?’

‘I didn’t know what to believe. In any case, it didn’t signify. All that mattered was that she was in Geneva and she needed money.’

‘If she did not apply to you again, that suggests that she found it elsewhere.’

‘What were the circumstances of her death?’ Savill asked, his voice harsher than before. ‘Had she been in Paris for long? Who was she with?’

‘She had been there for several years. I believe she had granted her favours to a number of gentlemen since von Streicher’s departure. But I have not been able to ascertain whether she was under anyone’s protection at the time of her death. I’m afraid she was killed during the riots. I understand that a band of sans-culottes attacked her in the house where she had taken refuge.’

‘Was she alone?’

‘I believe so.’ Rampton took his spectacles from the lectern and turned them slowly in his hands. ‘Despite the German name she bore, you see, she was known to be British. It was said that she was a spy and she had been forced to leave her former lodgings for fear the mob would find her, or the police.’

‘Was she?’

‘A spy?’ Rampton shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know. Does it matter now?’

The frame of the glasses snapped between the lenses. Rampton stared at the wreckage in his hands. For a moment neither man spoke.

‘She was stabbed, I understand,’ Rampton went on in a rush. ‘It must have been a quick death, at least. And the place was ransacked.’

Savill turned his head so Rampton could not see his face. He thought of Augusta as she had been when he had first seen her: at Mr Rampton’s house in Westminster. Seventeen, coolly beautiful even then, with a way of looking at you that would heat the blood of any man. Ice and fire.

‘We must look ahead,’ Rampton said. ‘Sad though this occasion is, sir, I believe I should congratulate you.’

Savill stared at him. ‘What?’

‘You are free at last, sir. Should you wish to marry again, there is now no impediment to your doing so. Your unhappy condition, this limbo you have been in, cannot have been easy for you.’

That was true enough. Augusta had given Savill ample grounds for divorce when she eloped so publicly with her German lover to the Continent, while he himself had been three thousand miles away in America. But divorce was a rich man’s luxury, even when the husband was so clearly the injured party.

‘This will draw a line under the whole sad affair,’ Mr Rampton went on.

‘She was my wife, sir,’ Savill said. ‘Not an affair.’

Rampton spread his hands. ‘My dear sir, I intended no disrespect to the dead.’ He folded his hands on his lap. ‘I fear I have been clumsy. You have had a shock. Will you take a glass of wine? A cup of tea?’

‘Thank you, no. Tell me the rest.’

‘I do not yet know the whole of it. But I am told that someone informed a friend of hers, a Monsieur Fournier, and he communicated with the Embassy. Everything was done as it should be, which must be a great comfort. There was a doctor in attendance to certify the death. A notary took down a statement concerning the circumstances of her demise, and it was signed by witnesses.’

Savill gazed out of the window. The swallows were still there but they had moved further away. Like charred leaves above a bonfire, he thought. A pyre.

Rampton cleared his throat. ‘It would give me great pleasure if you would stay and dine.’

‘Thank you, but I believe I shall ride back to London.’

‘There’s plenty of time yet,’ Rampton said. ‘And there is something else that we need to discuss which may perhaps take a while.’

Rampton paused. Savill said nothing.

‘There are the documents I mentioned,’ Rampton said. ‘The notary’s statement and the death certificate.’

‘If you have them, sir, I shall take them now,’ Savill said. ‘If not, then perhaps you would send them to me. You know my direction. Nightingale Lane, near Bedford Square.’

‘I don’t have them. They are in the possession of Monsieur Fournier. And he has something else of hers that may interest you.’

‘I doubt it,’ Savill said, rising from his chair. ‘There is nothing of my late wife’s that interests me.’

‘The matter is more delicate than it first might appear,’ Mr Rampton said. ‘And that is why I asked you to wait on me here at Vardells and not in town.’ He smiled up at Savill with unexpected sweetness. ‘Augusta had a son.’

Chapter Five

‘That scar on your cheek from New York,’ Rampton said when they were at table. ‘I had expected the wound to have healed better over the years. Does it pain you?’

‘Not at all,’ Savill said. ‘Why should it, after all this time?’

‘I’m rejoiced to hear it, sir.’

Rampton had ordered the curtains drawn and the candles lit, shutting out the blue sky and the swallows. Even in the country, he lived in some state. There were two manservants to wait at table. The food was good and the wine was better. The presence of the servants kept the conversation on general topics.

‘And how is your little daughter?’ he asked as Savill was helping himself to a delicately flavoured fricassee of chicken.

‘Lizzie?’ Savill glanced down the table. ‘Your goddaughter is in good health, sir, but she is not so little now.’

‘Good, good.’ Rampton nodded and looked pleased: it was as if the excellence of Lizzie’s health was something he himself had worked towards, something for which he could take credit, had he not modestly waived his right to it. ‘Is she like her mother?’

‘Yes. In appearance. Her face is softer, perhaps, gentler.’

‘As long as her character does not resemble her mother’s. Let us pray it does not.’

Savill said nothing.

‘Her mother was very beautiful at her age. If Elizabeth takes after her, she will have plenty of suitors. I dare say she will soon be of an age to marry.’

‘Should she wish to, sir, yes. If she finds a man who pleases her.’

‘If you take my advice, sir, you will encourage her to do so as soon as possible.’ Rampton dabbed his lips with his napkin. ‘Though it’s an expensive business, of course. Marriage, I mean. However one looks at it.’ He applied himself to a dish of lamb cutlets.

Savill sensed something unsaid here; he caught the ghost of its absence. ‘Is this your main residence now, sir?’ he asked.

‘Alas, no – I am much at Westminster. I must own I wish it were otherwise. I find I have a taste for country life. Of course this is little more than a cottage, and there’s barely fifty acres with it. But it’s enough for my simple wants. I’m building a wing to accommodate my library with bedrooms above, with a fine prospect over the garden. In the spring, I shall improve the prospect still further by sweeping away those old hedgerows and farm buildings to the west of the drive. Then it will be perfection.’

If this is a cottage, Savill thought, then I am a unicorn. The house had been refurbished since he had last been here. It now sat in grounds that were in the process of being newly laid out; on the east side of the drive, a great expanse of grass swept towards a small lake that had not been there before. As for the house, the new wing would increase its volume almost by half as much again. The work was nearly finished. Earlier in the day, carpenters had been fitting the French windows that would open from the library to the terrace.

‘Will you retire here, sir?’

‘Retire?’ Rampton smiled. ‘I doubt my masters would permit me to do that, not while this crisis continues in France. And God knows how long that will last. I tell you frankly, sir, I see no sign of its ending.’

‘You do not think that the King and the National Convention will come to an accommodation?’

Rampton’s smile did not waver. ‘That is for wiser heads than yours or mine to decide.’ He turned the subject smoothly. ‘But when I do retire, it will be delightful to be here.’

‘Will you not find it sadly dull?’

‘Not in the slightest. I shall have my books, of course, and I have a mind to turn farmer.’ Rampton crooked his finger at the servant who sprang from the shadows to refill Savill’s glass. ‘I have bought two or three tenanted farms nearby. I may take them into my own hands. A toast, sir – to your Elizabeth. May she find herself a husband that suits you both.’

Savill drank. He had once been a civil servant, and in those days he had known Mr Rampton’s ways as a dog knows his master’s. Rampton had not been talking idly during the meal. He had been making sure that Savill understood him.

‘I am rich,’ he was saying, ‘and I have the ear of powerful men, so you would be wise to oblige me. For your daughter’s sake as well as your own.’

With unnatural reverence, the servants removed the cloth and set out the wine, the nuts and the fruit. Rampton signalled for them to withdraw. The two men were sitting side by side now.

Savill bit down on a walnut and a stab of pain drove into his jaw. He twitched on his chair but managed to avoid crying out. He must find time to have the offending tooth pulled out. The truth was, he told himself, he was a coward where his teeth were concerned.

‘A toast, sir,’ Rampton said.

Savill pushed aside his plate and took up his glass with relief. They drank His Majesty’s health. Avoiding each other’s eyes, they drank to Augusta’s memory. Then the conversation faltered.

‘His name is Charles,’ Rampton snapped, as if Savill had said it was something quite different. ‘He must be about ten or eleven years old. Thereabouts.’

‘Do you know who his father is?’

Rampton cracked his knuckles, in the old days a sign of calculation; his clerks had mocked him for it, but only when they were safely out of his way. ‘I have not been able to ascertain that. I believe Augusta had left the Bavarian gentleman by then and was living in Rome, but my information is not exact.’

‘Does Charles speak English?’ Savill said.

‘The question had not occurred to me. I suppose, if he was born in Italy and he has spent the last few years in France …’ Rampton turned away and stared up at a portrait of himself. ‘Still,’ he went on in a quieter voice, ‘at his age it hardly signifies. The mind of a child is as porous as a sponge. It soaks up whatever you pour into it with extraordinary rapidity.’

‘If his father cannot be found, no doubt his mother’s friends will care for him. Where is he staying?’

‘The Embassy will let me know as soon as they hear.’

‘He’s nothing to do with me,’ Savill said, more loudly than he had intended. ‘He’s Augusta’s bastard.’

‘Pray moderate your voice, sir. You do not want the world to know your business.’

‘But it is not my business, sir. That’s my point.’

Rampton refilled their glasses. ‘The law would say otherwise. Augusta was still your wife at the time of her death. You and she were not divorced. I understand that she did not even leave a will, which makes you her heir. The child’s paternity is not established, and probably never will be. In sum, this is one of those cases where the law and common sense point in the same direction as a man’s duty as a Christian. The boy is your responsibility.’

‘Nonsense.’

To Savill’s surprise, Rampton smiled. ‘I thought you would say that. And, that being the case, my dear sir, let me propose a solution.’

‘You may propose what you wish, sir. It is nothing to do with me.’

Rampton leaned closer. ‘What if I take the boy myself?’

Chapter Six

Charles dreams of the boy called Louis.

He, Charles, is lying on his bed and Louis is standing by the window. This is similar to what actually happened when Dr Gohlis came at dawn that morning. But, in the dream, Charles already knows Louis’s name. He also knows that Louis is alone and naked in the world.

In the dream the light is much stronger than it was in real life. It floods over the doubly naked body of Louis. The colours glow like the stained glass in Notre Dame. Who would have thought there would be so many colours under a boy’s skin?

Charles glances down at his own body. He discovers that, though it is daytime, he is not wearing any clothes. Nor is he lying under the bedclothes. Like Louis, he has lost most of his skin. He sees rope-like arteries, the blue filigree of veins, the slabs of muscle, the shiny white knobs of bone. He too has become doubly naked.

He too has become beautiful.

Louis stares out of the window. But now he turns, his head leading his body. Charles sees his ruined face. Louis smiles, though of course it is not easy to tell that he is smiling because his lips and skin are gone and so has most of his facial tissue.

Louis holds out his right hand towards Charles. The gesture is unmistakably friendly. Charles tries to smile in return. That is, he thinks a smile, but he knows that he too lacks lips and skin so the smile may not be obvious.

He raises his right hand. It looks webbed, like a duck’s foot or the ribbed leaf of a cabbage.

‘Hello, Louis,’ he says.

Day by day, the house in the Rue du Bac empties itself of people and things. It also empties itself of its invisible contents, its rules, its habits, its regime. Charles does almost as he pleases now. He is under no restraint as long as he does not try to leave.

The servants are slipping away, despite the guards at the gates and doors leading to the outer world. They leave their tasks half-done – a mop standing in a pail of dirty water in a corner of the grand staircase; a drawing room with only a third of the furniture covered up and the pictures and ornaments ranged along one wall on the floor with the packing materials beside them.

The house is sliding into an unknown, unpredictable future, just as Charles is. He wanders from room to room, from salon to hall, from attic to cellar, frequently losing his way. The old woman who was meant to be looking after him is hardly ever there. He realizes after a while that he has not seen her for days. Perhaps she is dead.

Time itself loses its familiar markers, the hours of the day, the days of the week. There are many clocks in this house but no one troubles to wind them now or to set their hands. So time disintegrates into a variety of smaller times: and soon there will be no time at all.

Now that the old woman no longer brings him food, he is obliged to forage for it himself. He finds his way to the vaulted kitchens whose cellars run under the street.

In the city outside, people are starving. Here there is more food than anyone could ever eat. There are vegetables rotting down to brown mush; joints of meat turning grey and breeding maggots; and bins of flour that feed a shifting population of insects and small animals.

There are still people who cook and serve food, however, and their leftovers lie around the kitchens. There is water from the pump that serves the scullery tap. On one occasion he drinks a pot of cold coffee. On another he finds a bottle of wine nearly half full. The wine is golden and silky sweet. It cloys in his mouth. He drinks it all. It makes him sick and then sends him to sleep: he has a bad dream in which blood drips on him from a black sky streaked with flickering yellow; and he wakes with a headache.

He spends hours watching the Rue du Bac through the cracks in the shutters in what used to be the steward’s room. He stares down at the hats and heads bobbing to and fro and listens to the grinding roar of wheels and the shouting. Sometimes he hears a popping sound in the distance which he thinks is musketry.

Charles encounters the Abbé Viré. The old man wanders restlessly about the halls and stairs, his slippers shuffling like falling plaster on the marble and the stone. His cassock is stained with old food.

In the old days, Maman would take him to the Abbé for instruction in religion and tuition in mathematics and the classical authors. When Charles was very young, he believed Father Viré to be the earthly form of God.

All this makes the priest’s present conduct unsettling in the extreme. The Abbé does not appear to recognize Charles. He usually ignores him completely. He carries a breviary as he walks and reads from it, muttering to himself.

Once, Father Viré comes across Charles trying to read a ten-day-old newspaper in a disused powder-closet. The old priest raises his hand and sketches a blessing over Charles’s head, murmuring the familiar words into the dusty air.

As for the Count de Quillon, he stays in his suite of private apartments beyond the grand salon. Monsieur Fournier comes and goes. When he sees Charles, he often stops to ask how he does and whether he needs anything. Charles does not answer.

‘All will be well soon,’ he says one morning. ‘You’ll see.’

But Charles knows that nothing will ever be well and that the only thing he will see is more of what he sees now. Still, it is good of Monsieur Fournier to tell kind lies.

Sometimes they ask him the questions again – Fournier, the Count and Dr Gohlis. Always the same ones. What happened on the night your mother died? Did you see who was there? What was said?

Say nothing. Not a word to anyone.

One day, a wagon comes into the main courtyard, where the weeds are advancing in ragged green lines along the cracks between the flagstones. Men bring packing cases and begin to put things in them – pictures, statues, clocks and carpets. Some of the clocks are still ticking. They are nailed up alive in their coffins.

The remaining servants, working in relays, bring trunks and valises from the attics. They fill them with books, papers and clothes. Two more wagons come down the lane at the back of the house with a guard of armed men. They are loaded with the heavier items. They go away during the night. So do more of the servants, and then the house is emptier than ever.

As the people and the objects seep away from the Hotel de Quillon, Charles notices how shabby everything is – the damp patches on the plaster in the grand salon where the old tapestries used to hang; the cracks that snake across the ornate ceiling of the ladies’ withdrawing room; the leak in the roof of the room next to his which, one rainy night, brings down the whole ceiling.

Charles does not like the nighttimes because sometimes he wets the bed. This often happens on the nights after they have asked him the questions.

When he wets the bed, he is beaten the following morning. He understands this. He has done wrong. Since the old woman disappeared, no one notices if he wets the bed so it no longer matters.

One night, Dr Gohlis comes into Charles’s room and wakes him from a deep sleep. He squeezes the boy’s chin between finger and thumb. He holds the candle so Charles can see his face, orange and gold in the light of the flame.

‘Remember my écorché boy?’ he says. ‘Are you going to be like him one day?’

Charles knows that the écorché boy is called Louis. He is kept in the sitting room that has been set aside for the doctor’s use at the Hotel de Quillon. The door is locked when the doctor is not there.

One morning, Charles watches the doctor leave. He sees him hide the key on the ledge of the lintel above the door. Now Charles can visit Louis.

Often he chooses the very early morning when few people are stirring and the doctor is unlikely to be there. The écorché boy stands beside the doctor’s desk. Charles examines him carefully and presses his own body to see if he is the same underneath, under all that skin. He thinks of conversations they might have and games they might play. He likes to touch Louis and wishes that Louis could touch him. Once he kisses Louis’s cheek and he has the impression that Louis’s face is slightly wet, as if he has been crying.

One day the key is not on the lintel. The door is locked. Dr Gohlis is not there.

Who is left? Charles thinks there are perhaps half a dozen servants, the old abbé and himself. He cannot remember when he last saw the Count or Monsieur Fournier or Louis.

What will happen to me, Charles wonders. Will they leave me quite alone?

Then comes the night when everything changes. Just before dawn, Dr Gohlis wakes Charles, makes him dress and takes him downstairs. An old servant waits with two small valises in the hall.

Charles wants to say: ‘Where are we going?’ He also wants to ask Dr Gohlis what has happened to Louis.

But of course he cannot speak. He must not speak.

Not a word to anyone.

Chapter Seven

‘Mr Savill – may I make known Mr Malbourne, my clerk?’ Rampton said, enunciating the words with precision because he was wearing a set of ivory teeth. ‘Mr Malbourne – Mr Savill.’

They bowed to each other. Malbourne was a slender man with delicate, well-formed features and the address of a gentleman. Savill had found him and Rampton at work in the study when he arrived. The clerk’s right arm was in a black-silk sling, though he removed it when it was necessary for him to write.

This was Savill’s second visit to Vardells, nearly a month after his first, prompted by a letter from Rampton. It was late September now, and the leaves were turning on the lime trees beside the drive.

‘Mr Malbourne has intelligence that relates to Mrs Savill’s son,’ Rampton said. ‘It appears that Charles has been brought to England.’ He gestured to his clerk that he should continue.

‘Charles is living in the country with a party of newly arrived émigrés,’ Malbourne said. ‘Fleeing the massacres. There has been quite a flood of them.’

‘Where are they?’

‘They have taken a house in Somersetshire a few miles beyond Bath. Charnwood Court in the village of Norbury. The émigrés are people of some position in the world. Have you heard of the Count de Quillon?’

‘The late minister?’

‘Precisely. Though he held the seals of office for no more than three or four weeks before he was forced to resign.’

‘He was the old king’s godson,’ Rampton said. ‘Some say it was a nearer connection still, through his mother, and that was why he was in such favour at Versailles when he was a young man. This king made him a Chevalier of St Louis. Not that it stopped him from dabbling with the Revolution when it suited his purpose.’

‘The point is, sir,’ Malbourne went on, ‘Monsieur de Quillon is altogether the grand gentleman. He is not an easy man to deal with. He is accustomed to having his own way, to moving in the great world.’

‘Then why has he buried himself in the country?’ Savill asked.

‘Because his resources are limited,’ Malbourne said. ‘Most of his fortune is in France, and it has been seized. His estates have been sequestered. Also he and his allies have not many friends in London. After all, they are dangerous revolutionaries themselves: they tried to manipulate their king to their own advantage.’

‘Their chickens have come home to roost,’ Rampton observed.

‘Indeed, sir,’ Malbourne continued. ‘Moreover, they are detested by those of their fellow countrymen already in London, who have never wavered from their old allegiance to King Louis and never compromised their principles.’

‘Very true,’ Rampton said. ‘And, to speak plainly, my dear Savill, the Count and his friends have such a history of fomenting sedition, of flirting with the mob, that we ourselves have little desire to play host to them.’

‘Yet you let them come here.’

‘Unfortunately we lack the legal instruments to prevent it,’ Malbourne said.

‘For the time being,’ Rampton said. ‘But that is neither here nor there. Tell him about Fournier.’

‘Fournier?’ Savill said. ‘The man who dealt with the funeral arrangements?’

Malbourne bowed. ‘Yes, sir. He is the Count’s principal ally. Fournier preceded Monsieur de Quillon to England. Indeed, I believe Charnwood is leased to him, not the Count. He is a younger son of the Marquis de St Étienne and was the Bishop of Lodève under the old regime. But he has resigned his orders and now prefers to be known simply as Fournier.’ He smiled. ‘Citizen Fournier, no doubt.’

‘An atheist, they say,’ Rampton said sourly. ‘The worst of men.’

‘Mind you keep your seat this time,’ Rampton said as Malbourne was leaving.

Malbourne saluted them with his whip. ‘I’ll do my best, sir.’

He rode down the drive, urging his horse to a trot and then to a canter.

‘Foolish young man,’ Rampton said fondly. ‘He sprained his arm last month when he had a tumble. Hence the sling. It cannot be denied that there’s a reckless streak to Horace.’ He smiled. ‘Just as there was to his grandfather. That’s where the money went, you know, and the estates. He gambled as if his life depended on it – Vingt-et-un.’

Horse and rider were out of sight now but Savill heard the drumming of the hooves accelerate to a gallop.

Rampton stared along the terrace, at the far end of which two workmen were building a low wall. ‘Look, sir. Those damned swallows. They are already smearing their filth on my new library.’

‘Is Mr Malbourne in a hurry or does he always ride like that?’ Savill said.

‘He is expected at the Woorgreens’ this evening and he will not wish to be late.’ Rampton glanced at Savill and decided to enlighten his ignorance. ‘Mr Woorgreen, the East India Nabob. He is betrothed to the younger Miss Woorgreen. He will have twelve hundred a year by it, I believe. There’s also the consideration that her mother’s brother is a friend of Mr Pitt’s.’

They went into the house. Savill was engaged to dine and spend the night.

‘Horace Malbourne is a man of parts,’ Rampton said, leading the way into the study. ‘Well connected too. But if he wishes to get on in the world, he knows he must set aside his wild oats and marry money. If all goes well, we shall see him in Parliament in a year or two.’

How very agreeable it must be, Savill thought, to have one’s life mapped out like that: a comfortable place in a government office, a rich wife, a seat in Parliament.

‘He was my ward, you know – his poor mama entrusted him to me when she died.’ Rampton rang the bell and sat down before the fire. ‘But he has amply repaid my care and now he is most valuable to me. When he marries, though, he will spread his wings and fly away.’

Like a swallow, Savill thought, when winter comes.

The manservant came and Rampton gave orders for dinner. Savill wondered whether the introduction of Mr Malbourne had been designed to serve a secondary purpose: to show Savill that Rampton was worthy to stand in the place of a father; that he might safely be entrusted with the care of Augusta’s son.

‘By the way,’ Rampton went on, ‘I have not confided in him that I may adopt Charles.’

‘Because that has not been settled, sir.’

‘Quite so. But in any case I think it better that Malbourne believes that I’m assisting you to win control of the boy solely in view of our family connection. Also, of course, it’s in the Government’s interest to know more about the household at Charnwood and what they are doing.’

Soon afterwards, they went into dinner. Savill had not accepted Rampton’s proposition, but the very fact of his being here was significant, and they both knew it. Rampton had the sense not to press home his advantage. Instead he talked with an appearance of frankness about the situation in France and the Government’s policy towards it.

It was almost enjoyable, Savill found, to talk with Rampton on a footing that, if not precisely equal, was at least one of independence. Once upon a time, Rampton had been his unwilling patron because Savill had married his niece. He, Savill, had served as one of his clerks in the American Department during the late war, though he had never been in such high favour as the elegant Mr Malbourne.

Despite himself, he was impressed by his host. Rampton’s career had collapsed near the end of the war, when the King had dismissed the American secretary and closed down the entire department. Yet, somehow, he had clawed his way back.

But to what, exactly? When Savill had tried to probe further, all he could discover was that Rampton now worked in some capacity for the Post Office, and also advised the Secretary of State for the Home Department on regulations for the government of Ireland. He let slip that he held a sinecure, too, Clerk of the Peace and Chief Clerk of the Supreme Court in Jamaica, which must provide him with a substantial income. All this suggested that the Government now held him in considerable esteem.

After dinner, Rampton showed Savill his new library, where they inspected the fireplace he had imported from Italy. They took a light supper in the salon next door at about eleven o’clock. They drank each other’s health in an atmosphere that might almost have been described as cordial.

Rampton sat back in his chair. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Have we an agreement? In principle, if not in detail.’

‘Are we not ahead of ourselves, sir? The boy’s still in Somersetshire, still in the care of his friends.’

‘You have the power to change that, sir.’ Rampton took up an apple and began to peel it with a silver knife. ‘It’s in the best interests of everyone concerned.’

‘We don’t know what the boy would wish.’

Rampton waved the knife. ‘That’s neither here nor there. He is only a boy, after all. He is not legally of an age where he may control his own destiny. We may safely leave his opinions out of it.’

Savill said nothing.

‘Well?’ Rampton said, setting down his glass more forcibly than was necessary.

‘I reserve the right to defer my final decision until I have met the boy.’

There was silence, which grew uncomfortable.

‘You have changed, haven’t you, Mr Savill?’ Rampton said.

‘Time does alter a man, sir.’

‘True – and that scar, too. And, if I were to hazard a guess, I should say that you are not as comfortably situated as perhaps you might have wished to be at this time of life.’

‘You suggest I am a poor man.’ Savill’s tooth began to throb.

‘Not at all, sir. I merely meant to imply that perhaps, like most of us, you would prefer to be a little more comfortable than you are.’

Savill bowed.

‘I’m told that you act as the English agent of several Americans who have property in this country and you undertake a variety of commissions for them. And sometimes also for gentlemen of the law.’

Rampton paused. He sat back in his chair and smiled at Savill, who said nothing.

‘That’s all very well, I’m sure,’ Rampton went on, ‘But in this unsettled world of ours, there is much to be said for the tranquillity of mind that a fixed salary brings, is there not?’ Frowning, he massaged his fingers. ‘I might possibly be able to put you in the way of a position, which would provide a modest competence paid quarterly. A clerkship in the Colonies, perhaps, you know the sort of thing. You would be able to appoint a deputy to do the work so you would not find it inconvenient or unduly onerous.’

A bribe, Savill thought. He is offering me a bribe if I do as he wishes. He took out a pair of dice he kept in his waistcoat pocket and rolled them from one hand to the other. A seven.

‘I had not put you down as a gambler, sir,’ Rampton said.

‘I’m not. The dice remind me that chance plays its part in all our actions.’

‘You are grown quite philosophical.’

Savill shrugged. In truth, he kept the dice in his pocket because they reminded him that nothing should be taken for granted, that the Wheel of Fortune might spin at any moment, that everything was precarious. He had learned that long ago in another country.

‘Permit me to tell you why I want the boy,’ the old man said.

‘Charles, sir,’ Savill said. ‘His name is Charles.’

‘Indeed, sir. But pray hear me out. You have had a month to grow accustomed to my proposal. You see this?’ He waved his hand about the room. ‘This house of mine, the gardens, the farms, the house in Westminster. All this, and indeed there’s more. But I have no children of my own – no one to leave this to. Nor do I have any close relations left alive, no one to carry my name into the future. That is why I want Charles. He is Augusta’s son, therefore he is my own kin, my own great-nephew. I wish him to bear the name of Rampton. And is this not the happiest outcome for all concerned? After all, I am his nearest relation, in blood if not in law.’

‘No, sir, you are not.’ Savill took up his glass. ‘My daughter Lizzie is his nearest relation. She’s his half-sister.’

‘A quibble, my dear sir. She does not even know of the boy’s existence. She cannot miss what she has never had. Nor is she in a position to do anything for him.’

Rampton placed his hand on Savill’s arm. ‘So perhaps we can come to an arrangement?’

‘You cannot buy him, sir, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I would make him my heir. My adopted son.’

‘Then I am surprised you have not brought him here already,’ Savill said. ‘Rather than leave him in such evil company.’

Rampton took a deep breath and tried the effect of a smile. ‘You must understand that my position makes it quite impossible for me to be seen as a principal in this affair. As one of His Majesty’s civil servants, it would not be fitting for me to have private business with the Count de Quillon and his friends, whose reputations are irrevocably stained by their political and moral degeneracy. For the same reason, I cannot send Malbourne. Besides, the press of business is such that I do not believe I could spare him.’

‘I see that no such scruples need restrain me,’ Savill said, resisting a sudden urge to laugh.

‘Indeed – as a private citizen and Augusta’s husband, you have every right to claim the boy. My name need not appear in the matter at all. There is another consideration which may sway you – Monsieur de Quillon and Monsieur Fournier hold the papers attesting to Augusta’s death and burial. You must have these. You will need them, not least if you should ever wish to marry again … after all, my dear sir, you are still in the prime of life. And then – what if the Count should refuse to surrender Charles? Only you are in a position to force his hand. Indeed, it is your duty.’

‘But why the devil should Monsieur de Quillon wish to retain him?’ Savill said.

Rampton cracked his knuckles. ‘Oh, as to that – that is part of the difficulty; the Count has a foolish fancy that Charles is his son.’

Chapter Eight

Charnwood is an old house where nothing is correct. All the lines are crooked – the walls, the roofs, the chimneystacks. It stands in a muddy place where it is always cold and raining. At night it is so dark and quiet that if a person screamed only the stars would hear him.

We are quite safe here, Fournier tells Charles. No one can harm us.

But nobody is happy here, Charles thinks, even Fournier and the Count, who talk endlessly about King Louis and the poor royal family, captives in the Temple, and about their own unhappy plight.

‘We are in exile,’ the Count says one morning when Charles is in the room. ‘No one will visit us here. I declare I shall die of boredom.’

It is settled that Dr Gohlis will join the party, though Charles understands that he is not so much a visitor as a superior sort of servant who is permitted to dine with his masters. Fournier gives him permission to use a room over the stables for his experiments.

‘Monsieur de Quillon and I do not want you pursuing your studies in the house,’ Fournier says to the doctor by way of pleasantry. ‘It would not be agreeable to hear the screams of your victims.’

Charles listens to the servants’ conversation. The servants talk quite freely when he is among them. He learns that, in their eyes, his inability to speak makes him an idiot or a dumb animal. He also eavesdrops on the Count, which is not difficult because he rarely moderates the volume of his voice.

So Charles soon learns the reason why nobody comes to call on them. It is a fact to be recorded in his memory and relied on. The Vicar of Norbury, Mr Horton, does not approve of the Count and Monsieur Fournier. Their politics, their lack of religion and their amoral conduct put them beyond the pale.

The local gentry, such as they are – ‘Jumped-up farmers,’ says the Count, ‘clodhopping peasants with turnips under their fingernails’ – take their lead from Mr Horton. The King of England does not like them either, so no one is allowed to come down from London.

Mrs West, who lives at Norbury Park, is their friend, but she cannot call at Charnwood because there is no lady in the house to receive her. Sometimes the gentlemen call on her and she asks them to dine. But Charles always stays at Charnwood.

The Count summons Charles. The grown-ups are dining so they are all there around the table. The room with its peeling wallpaper smells of gravy and wine and perfume as well as of damp.

‘You went outside today,’ the Count says. ‘Saul saw you in the stableyard.’

Saul is Monsieur de Quillon’s valet, who has come with him from France.

The Count leans his elbow on the table and brings his great head almost to the level of Charles’s. ‘That’s all right. When you are at liberty, you may go there. And you may go into the gardens. But that is all. You must not go into the woods, or the fields, or into the village. Is that understood?’

Charles stares at him.

‘Well?’ the Count says. ‘You understand? Why the devil will you not speak?’

‘We must see what we can contrive,’ Gohlis says, putting his head on one side and studying Charles. ‘He can do better than this.’

Fournier says, ‘Yes, he does understand. You can see it in his eyes.’

‘It is most interesting,’ the doctor says to the Count. ‘Considered philosophically and scientifically. You must permit me to try an experiment, sir.’

‘You can do as you like, as long as you make him speak.’

In the last week of September, the doctor’s luggage arrives – two trunks and three wooden boxes.

One of the boxes contains the figure of Louis, wrapped in a cotton shroud and floating in a cloud of wood shavings. Dr Gohlis himself unpacks him. Charles watches the disinterment from the second-floor landing, where his room is. He peers through the balustrade, down the well through the middle of the house to the floor of the hall where the doctor is at work.

He is like a gravedigger, Charles thinks, bringing out the dead.

The contents of the boxes, including Louis, are transferred to the room in the stables. Gohlis calls the room his laboratory.

Next morning Charles rises very early. Only the servants are downstairs. He goes out to the stableyard. The doctor’s room is at one end of the loft over the looseboxes, where there is now only a solitary horse.

The door is locked. Charles cannot find the key.

Beside the stable is the coach house. It is possible, Charles finds, to scramble on to a water butt in the yard and climb into the lead-lined gully at the foot of the sloping roof of the coach house. If he walks along the gully, and climbs up the slope of the tiled roof, he can look through the dusty window of the laboratory.

Charles feels a surge of relief when he sees Louis standing at the end of the table on the other side of the window. He is looking across the table and keeping his own counsel.

If, as is possible, there is still someone there, a living boy locked in the prison made from the mould of his own mutilated body, then he must be able to see the window from the corner of his eye.

Charles thinks of the saints in Notre-Dame on the Île de la Cité. You may pray to the statue of a saint and the saint hears your prayer and will answer you, if he or she pleases. What is prayer but conversation in church? Why should Louis be any different from an image of the Virgin?

Charles taps the glass. Louis, he thinks as hard as he can, it’s me.

At first he thinks it in French. Then, to be on the safe side, he thinks it in English.

Next day, Thursday, the Charnwood laundry comes back. The washerwoman has a dark, wrinkled face. Her name is Mrs White, and she lives in the cottage at the end of the drive and opens the gate to visitors. (These are all facts, and may be relied upon.)

Mrs White is fat, deaf and very small. She is like a hedgehog in a dirty brown dress. She comes up the back drive in a cart drawn by a donkey with the scars of old sores and old beatings on its flanks.

The clean linen is in three wicker baskets, on one of which she sits. Charles wonders how many shirts and sheets and pairs of stockings have been squeezed into them.

The gardener’s boy leads the donkey. He holds the bridle in one hand and a stick in the other. The stick is for beating the donkey. The boy is a year or two older than Charles and has red hair. According to one of the maids, he is Mrs White’s grandson.

Charnwood is surrounded by a small park. Charles shelters in a clump of trees and watches them coming up the drive. He likes to know who comes and goes. In this strange place among strange and half-strange people, he does not know very much yet. But gradually he accumulates information. It is not much but it is something. Facts are solid things. You may trust them, unlike people.

The old woman in the cart stares straight ahead. She does not move at all. Perhaps she is asleep. The boy trudges up the drive, occasionally glancing at the donkey and prodding or hitting it with his stick.

The cart passes within twenty or thirty yards of the trees where Charles is standing. He is not exactly hiding, but he does not wish to be seen so he stands well back, partly concealed by the trunk of a cedar tree.

At the nearest point between them, the red-headed boy looks at the trees, looks directly at Charles.

The donkey plods on. The cart rattles. The boy glances at the donkey and hits it very hard with the stick.

That’s all it takes. Charles knows from that moment that the gardener’s boy hates him. If you can have love at first sight, then why not hate? You do not need a reason to love and you do not need a reason to hate.

Later he encounters the gardener’s boy again. It is in the stableyard. Charles has gone there because Dr Gohlis is paying an afternoon call on Mrs West, so he will not be in the laboratory. Charles plans to search for the key to the door. Even if he doesn’t find it, he will be able to peer through the window at Louis and greet him.

To his horror, though, he finds the red-headed boy is in the yard. He is shortening the donkey’s reins.

There is no time to retreat. The boy abandons the donkey. He comes up to Charles, herding him like a dog with a sheep into the corner where the mounting block stands by the door to the house.

He prods Charles with his forefinger. ‘Cat got your tongue, then?’

He is a head taller and his accent is as dense as mud. Charles stares at the ground. There’s a hole in the sole and the upper of the boy’s right shoe. His big toe pokes through.

‘You’re an idiot.’

The boy comes closer and blows a raspberry. His spittle sprays over Charles’s face.

‘Little baby. Look at you – dribbling all over your baby face.’ The boy smiles. ‘You can’t even speak. So I can do whatever I like to you. Can’t tell no one, can you?’

He sucks in air, ready for another raspberry. But suddenly the door bangs against the wall and the Count himself is there. He grabs the boy by the scruff of his neck and flings him down on the cobbles.

The Count is dressed for riding. He is carrying a crop. He beats the boy to the ground. The whip slashes this way and that. Charles watches.

The boy squirms like a worm. He cries for mercy. He cries for his mother.

Charles puts his hands over his ears in an attempt to block out the screams. There is blood on the boy’s shirt, so bright that for a moment Charles has to close his eyes.

Chapter Nine

At first, Charles cannot make out much of what the English say. Their words collide and mingle with one another in a babble of sound, like water running over pebbles.

He thought he would be able to understand everything because Maman taught English to him at home, as far back as he can remember. But perhaps Maman spoke a different sort of English.

Gradually, however, as the long days pass, Charles learns to understand more and more of what he hears. Sometimes he even dreams in English.

He wishes there were only one language in the world. He speaks – or rather used to speak, French, Maman’s special sort of English and – left over from when he was very small – some Italian and even a little German. Oh, and there is yet another language – the Latin the priests use, the language of church and lessons.

Often he does not know where one language ends and another begins. In his head they bleed into one another like watercolour paints when you splash water on them.

Why are there so many words? And why can he say none of them?

Early in the afternoon on the first day of October, the sun comes out for a short while and Charles goes to the Garden of Neptune. This is higher up the valley than the house, where the pleasure grounds give way to meadow and woodland.

It is a garden within the garden, enclosed by walls and tall hedges. In the middle is a pond with a stone statue, discoloured by age and lichen. The god has lost his trident. He looks stunted because he has disproportionally short legs and arms, like a dwarf that Charles and Maman used to see begging on the Rue Saint-Honoré, near the Palais Royale.

The other night, Charles had a nightmare about Neptune. The sea god found his trident in the water. He waded across to the wall surrounding the pool and began stabbing Charles with his weapon. In the dream, Neptune’s body was dripping and hung with weeds. His legs had scales like a fish. But as the god stabbed and stabbed, the blood poured from Charles’s body in great gouts. Soon it was raining bright blood and Neptune himself turned red.

Blood spurts from people like water from a pump. Charles knows that. (It is a fact.)

He has made himself return to the garden. For, if Neptune has not found his trident, then everything Charles remembers from the dream has never happened.

It never rained blood. Not really. Never, never, never. It is important to be sure of these things.

Neptune has not found his trident.

Afterwards Charles decides to measure the garden. A network of paths connects the gates and runs between the beds where small bushes grow. He walks up and down, counting.

The path parallel to the wall is fifty-two paces on its two long sides. It is thirty-four paces on one of the shorter ones, and thirty-two paces on the other – which worries Charles because it means that the garden cannot be a perfect rectangle and he will find it hard to calculate its area. He knows how to calculate areas, but only if they form exact squares and rectangles. A further complication is that he does not know exactly how long his paces are.

He has all these numbers in his head, and he scratches them on the gravel to help him remember. But they are just that – numbers. They don’t tell him other things. They float like clouds, unattached to anything solid.

In his frustration, Charles kicks the low wall around the pool and hurts his foot. The water is green and covered with weeds and insects that play on the surface as if it were a sheet of glass. Neptune is reflected in the water, sneering up at him.

Charles picks up a handful of gravel and throws it into the pond. The smooth glass shatters. The reflection of Neptune disintegrates.

There, he thinks, that will teach you to hurt me.

That is when he hears the footsteps.

Charles turns. The gardener’s boy has come into the garden. He walks slowly along the wide alley that runs down the middle of the garden towards Neptune and his pond.

The gardener’s boy stares at Charles. His face is very serious. His lips are moving slightly. Charles wonders if he is trying to multiply big numbers in his head, perhaps calculating the number of stockings and shirts in his baskets. There are still red weals on his cheek from the beating.

The boy stops just before he would bump into Charles. He scuffs at the numbers in the gravel, obliterating the facts they record. His face is dirty. He has freckles that make it look dirtier. Words pour out of his mouth in his thick, soft, shapeless voice.

‘Goddamned foreigner, you can’t even speak, you’re a baby, you piss in your bed, you’re a windy great looby, you skinny ballocks, you stinking Frog noodle …’

He says the words over and again, like a prayer. The more he says, the angrier he becomes.

He takes Charles’s left ear by the lobe. He pinches it. Charles opens his mouth and a scream comes out, a high, wordless sound like a small animal in pain. The boy does not let go. Charles tries to hit and kick him but the boy holds him at arm’s length.

There is a spark in the boy’s green eyes. He drags Charles’s head backwards. With his other hand he turns Charles around. He forces him to his knees. He bends him over the parapet of the pool.

The stone coping digs into Charles’s ribs. The gardener’s boy pushes Charles’s head slowly towards the water.

The sun is reflected in its surface. He closes his eyes. The pain in his ear fills his head with white noise.

With his free hand the gardener’s boy pins Charles’s body to the parapet.

The water is cool and as soft as a silk dress. Charles opens his eyes. A fish slips away into the murky depths. He opens his mouth to scream. He swallows water.

The grip on his ear drags him down and down. His legs flail. The pain in his chest is now worse than the pain in his ear. Then pain has no borders. It goes everywhere.

In an instant Charles remembers how he saw a man drown a litter of kittens in the yard when he was very small. The man put them one by one into the bucket of water and held them under the surface. The kittens’ legs kicked. The bodies writhed. When there was no more movement, the man took each scrap of dripping fur from the water and laid it on the ground where it lay perfectly still. Then he reached for another kitten, and soon they were all dead. Sodden scraps of flesh and fur.

While Charles is drowning, in the middle of all the pain, he sees this bucket quite clearly. He sees the man’s hand and remembers how the back of it was covered with black hairs. He sees the head of a drowning kitten between his fingers.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it is over. Charles is dragged out of the water and thrown to the ground, where he lies, panting and dribbling.

Slowly the white noise and the pain diminish. Charles coughs. He hears the boy’s running footsteps.

Charles retches – at first weakly and then with increasing violence. Dirty water spews out of his mouth and splashes on his face and hands.

That night Charles wets the bed again.

He doesn’t know why this shameful and babyish thing should happen: it just does. This is the first time that he has been caught wetting the bed since they came to England.

When the maid discovers that he has wet the bed, she calls the housekeeper, who is very stern, very English. Her name is Mrs Cox and she has a voice that sounds like chalk scratching on a slate.

Mrs Cox shakes her head and says to the maid that the boy is a dirty, devilish imp, and what can you expect of these foreigners? This one can’t even speak his own language.

The maid says maybe he’s a simpleton, like the girl in the village who looks like a monkey and cannot keep herself clean.

Mrs Cox replies that in any case the boy should be whipped to beat the nonsense out of him.

For some reason Charles thinks of the way Marie used to beat the dust from the carpets in the backyard of their lodgings in Paris. In the middle of his fear, he has a picture in his head of himself draped over a fence, with Mrs Cox and the maid on either side of him, beating him with carpet beaters so that the wickedness flies out of him in puffs of evil. He thinks Mrs Cox would enjoy that, and probably the maid too.

But the housekeeper is not quite sure of her powers. She says she will speak to Monsieur de Quillon’s valet, who has some English, and ask him to speak to his master.

Charles waits all day for the blow to fall. But nothing happens. Not that day, nor the next, nor the one after.

Every night he prays on his knees to God that he will not wet the bed again.

Sometimes God listens. Sometimes he doesn’t.

Chapter Ten

Savill’s daughter, Lizzie, had lived with her aunt and uncle in Shepperton, on the Thames, from the time that she was little more than a baby until the death of her uncle.

That melancholy event had been two years ago. Afterwards, Savill had brought his sister and his daughter to Nightingale Lane. The freeholds belonged to a widow in New York, who stubbornly refused to sell them, though he had forwarded several offers to her. There were four houses in the lane, and he had the largest, which had a garden with a small orchard.

The builders were at work all around, raising new houses in new, neatly proportioned streets. Most of the land around was owned by the Duke of Bedford, apart from a rectangular enclave north of Great Store Street where the City of London held the freeholds.

Nightingale Lane was squeezed between the Duke’s estate and the City’s land, a tiny kink in the pattern, an outrage against the principles of rational design and commercial good sense. But sometimes, early in the morning, before the builders started work and the streets filled with traffic, Savill heard the birds singing their laments in his garden, singing for lost fields and ruined hedgerows.

It was the first time that he and Lizzie had lived under the same roof for more than a few months. It healed a wound he hardly knew he had until it began to scab over.

In the past, he had missed his daughter more than he cared to admit, even to himself. When she was seven, he had commissioned an artist to paint a miniature of her, which he had had framed and enclosed in a square case, bound in green leather, now faded and much worn. He had kept it on his table or by his bed, standing open. It had been a poor substitute for a flesh-and-blood child, but it had been better than nothing.

On the last Saturday in September, more than a week after Savill’s second visit to Mr Rampton’s house in Stanmore, he came home from the City to find Lizzie in the parlour, waiting to preside over the tea table.

‘You look fatigued,’ she said in a severe voice.

He kissed her. ‘Where is your aunt?’

‘Drinking tea with Mrs Foster and admiring her grandchildren, especially the new one. But why are you looking so stern, sir?’

‘I shall tell you directly.’

‘You shall tell me nothing until you have sat down in your armchair and we have rung for hot water.’

She would not let him say what he wished to say until the water had been brought, the tea measured out, and the infusion was brewing.

‘Well, sir, you may speak,’ she said, folding her hands in her lap and looking at him with a sort of mock gravity that usually made him laugh.

‘I was obliged to go out of town the other day and see your Uncle Rampton,’ he said.

She made a face. ‘Nothing disagreeable?’

‘Not for you, I hope.’

‘I think he must be an odious man. He does nothing for you.’

‘My dear,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid there’s news of your mother.’

At once the cheerfulness left Lizzie’s face. She raised her hand to her mouth as if holding back the words that were trying to get out. Savill knew that she barely remembered her mother, who had absconded when she was very young; and, even before that, she had seen little of her, for in those days Augusta had not been much troubled by maternal feelings.

‘She’s not here?’ Lizzie blurted out, the colour rushing to her cheeks. ‘Not in London?’

‘No. My dear, you must prepare yourself for a shock. I am sorry to say that your mother is dead.’

Lizzie’s face puckered, as if age had prematurely withered it. ‘Oh. I – I see.’

‘She died in Paris.’ Savill leaned forward and took his daughter’s hand, which lay limp and warm in his. ‘Mr Rampton said it was very sudden. I do not know the details yet, but I shall in a week or two.’

‘I don’t know what to say, Papa.’

‘You don’t have to say anything. Nothing is changed – not for you – not for me.’

She raised her head suddenly. ‘But it has. For you, at least. You can marry again.’ Her colour deepened. ‘That is to say, should you wish to.’ She sat up very straight and turned away to busy herself with the tea.

Savill was seized by a desire to laugh. He said gravely, ‘I have no intention of marrying at present. Besides, you must not worry about me. Or about your mother.’

‘But I don’t know what to feel,’ she said in a voice that was almost a child’s wail.

‘You don’t have to feel anything, my love.’

‘Will we go into mourning?’

‘Perhaps not, in the circumstances.’ He rubbed his scar, which had begun to itch. ‘I will consult your aunt – she will know what is proper. But first there is one other thing you must know.’

She looked down at her lap and did not speak.

‘After she went away, your mother had a child. A son. He is still alive.’

Her head jerked up. ‘I have a brother?’

‘Yes. A half-brother.’

‘Why did you not tell me before?’

‘Because I did not know myself until I saw your uncle Rampton.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Ten or eleven, I believe,’ Savill said.

‘A half-brother,’ she repeated. He watched her calculating the arithmetic. ‘So – who was his father? I – I’m sorry, perhaps it is indelicate of me to—’

‘It is natural that you should ask. But I’m afraid I cannot tell you that either, because I do not know. Perhaps I will find out when I see him.’

‘Is he here? In England?’

‘Yes. Not in London, though.’

‘When shall we see him? Where will he live? Will he live with us here?’

‘I expect you will see him at some point, but I do not know quite when. As for where he will live, Mr Rampton has a fancy to adopt him. If he does that, I dare say the boy would live with him, except when he is at school, and so on.’

‘But he should live with us, Papa.’ Colour flooded over her face. ‘If he’s my brother, I’m nearer kin to him than Mr Rampton.’

‘True. But Mr Rampton can give him things that we cannot give him.’

She forced him to stop again. ‘It is not that you don’t want him, is it? Because he – he’s not your son?’

‘No …’ Savill hesitated. ‘Or rather, I do not think so.’

‘What is his name?’

‘Charles.’

‘Charles,’ she repeated, as if turning the name over in her mind and examining it from every angle. ‘Charles. Where is he living now? Who is looking after him?’

‘In England, at the house of a French gentleman, the Count de Quillon, who was obliged to leave his country because of the Revolution. Which is another complication. The Count had a kindness for your mother and, for her sake, he wishes to keep Charles with him and remain his guardian.’

‘But surely you would not let them take him from us? Either this Count or my uncle Rampton?’

‘The poor boy is alone in the world, and orphaned. He does not know us at all. I wish to do what is best for him, not for us.’

There was a silence.

‘Will you pour the tea?’ he said.

She obeyed mechanically. But as she passed him his cup she looked directly at him.

‘Will you ask him about my mother?’ she said. ‘Will he tell you who his father is? Do you think he knows?’

‘I don’t know,’ Savill said. ‘I don’t know anything except that he’s your mother’s son and his name is Charles. And I shall go down to Somersetshire next week to fetch him.’

Chapter Eleven

The house in Crown Street was one of a gently curving terrace. The building had been newly refaced and refurbished. It must once have been a private residence but, like so many of its neighbours in the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster, it had gradually become a government office.

Savill mounted the three shallow steps up to the front door. At his knock, a shutter in one of the door’s upper panels slid open. Savill glimpsed a fat finger that lacked a nail. He gave his name and asked for Mr Rampton.

After a pause, he heard the rattle of a chain within and the grating of bolts. The door opened, revealing a vast porter whose bulk filled most of the height and width of the narrow hallway. He was as tall as a Potsdam grenadier but far wider. His barrel of a body balanced on tapering legs that seemed too thin and fragile to bear its weight.

Beyond him was an inner door. Breathing heavily through his mouth, for his nose was a flattened ruin, he studied Savill and then consulted a sheet of paper in his hand. He looked up. ‘You’re to go in,’ he said in a combative tone, as though Savill had expressed a wish to do otherwise.

The porter rapped twice on the inner door. As he did so, Savill glimpsed the palm of his right hand, which was disfigured by a broad welt or burn.

There was the rattle of another bolt. The inner door opened. A grizzled, whippet-thin clerk took Savill’s name and business without comment. He waved him into a room on the left of the passage, where two other clerks were at work. The office was divided by a tall wooden partition into unequal parts. In the larger part, nearer the fire and the window, were the clerks’ high desks. In the smaller part were four dirty wooden chairs for visitors and a row of hooks.

‘I dare say Mr Rampton will see you shortly,’ the clerk muttered.

He retired behind the partition, where he pulled a handle in the wall by the fireplace and clambered on to his stool. Savill heard the ping of a distant bell. He sat, his face impassive, while the three clerks took turns to peer over the partition at the visitor. As soon as he met their eyes, they looked away.

Five minutes passed, perhaps ten. There were footsteps on the stairs and Malbourne came into the office. He was no longer wearing the black-silk sling.

‘Mr Savill, sir, your servant. I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting. Mr Rampton’s quite at leisure now and begs you to step up.’

‘What is this place?’ Savill asked as he climbed the stairs.

Malbourne glanced over his shoulder. ‘We are part of the Post Office, sir.’

A clock ticked on the first-floor landing and the brass door furniture shone. Malbourne led him into an office overlooking the street and tapped on an inner door. Rampton’s voice cried ‘Enter’.

The room beyond was large, airy and comfortably furnished. Only a large table set along one wall hinted that business was transacted here. It held bundles of letters tied with pink ribbon, some of them sorted into flat, rectangular baskets.

Savill bowed to Mr Rampton who, with great condescension, rose from his chair behind his desk and inclined his head in return.

‘How obliging of you to call,’ Mr Rampton said, as if this was no more than a casual meeting. ‘Shall Malbourne send out for something? Is it too early for a glass of sherry?’

‘Not for me, sir, thank you.’

‘You may leave us, Horace. Close the door, but hold yourself at readiness in case I need you.’

Malbourne bowed and withdrew. He closed the door but Savill did not hear the snick of the catch engaging.

Rampton waved Savill to a chair beside his desk. ‘Tell me, how does Miss Elizabeth do this morning?’

Savill said she was very well and added that his daughter would be most gratified to hear that her uncle Rampton had been enquiring after her.

Rampton nodded impatiently. ‘I take it that you have not had second thoughts about our agreement?’

‘No, sir. As you may recall, I have committed myself merely to—’

‘Yes, to be sure we are quite clear about where we both stand.’ Rampton opened a drawer and took out a small packet. ‘For my part, I have not been idle since we last met. I directed my attorney to write on your behalf to the Count, informing him that you, as my poor niece’s husband, propose to call on him at Charnwood to collect the boy and the necessary papers. My name does not appear, of course. The Count should have received the letter by now.’

The top of Rampton’s desk was almost empty – it was a fad of his, Savill remembered, to keep the desk he worked on as clear as possible. He broke the seal that secured the outer wrapping of the packet. He took out two sheets of paper.

‘This one confirms who you are,’ he said, ‘and this one is an attested copy of the marriage certificate of my poor niece and yourself.’ He put down the papers and took up a third. ‘Are you familiar with the terms of the new Police Act? No? Well, I suppose there’s no reason that a law-abiding citizen need be. One of the provisions of the act was to set up police offices and appoint stipendiary magistrates. Foolish people always assume that such measures constitute a mechanism for government to suppress the liberties of individual citizens …’

‘Are they wrong?’

‘Of course they are. Our police have a particular task, and only one: to prevent revolution. One of their magistrates, Mr Ford, has provided you with this warrant: it gives you the authority to enter Charnwood Court and remove the boy Charles into your keep. I hope it will not be necessary for you to use it, but there is no harm in your being prepared.’

Savill watched the papers multiplying on the desk. He felt stirrings of alarm. Attorneys? Magistrates? Police offices?

Rampton picked up another document. ‘Now, you should not need this but it will serve to introduce you to a local justice as a representative of the police office. Mr Ford requires him to give you any assistance you may need. In case of emergency, he appoints you under the Police Act as his agent or deputy, which gives you temporary powers of inquiry, arrest and detention, subject of course to his confirmation.’ He looked at Savill and his hand fluttered as if shaking drops of water from his fingers. ‘Again, just in case.’

‘Surely this is quite unnecessary, sir?’

‘Almost certainly it is,’ Rampton said. ‘But the Government believes these are dangerous people. One should take nothing for granted.’ The fingers fluttered to alight upon another sheet of paper. ‘Say, for example, you should desire to communicate with me while you are at Charnwood. Do not write to me here or at Vardells. Address the letter to Frederick Brown, Esquire, at the White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly, to await collection. I have made a memorandum here.’

Savill said, ‘Who is Mr Brown?’

‘There is no Mr Brown, as such. He is a convenient fiction. I must emphasize that my name must not appear in this in any way. It would be prejudicial to the Government.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘I’m afraid I am not at liberty to say.’ Rampton smiled across the desk. ‘Now – this is an inside ticket to Bath, on the mail diligence. I understand that Charnwood is fifteen or twenty miles from the city. You will have to hire a conveyance to take you on to Charnwood. And perhaps on your way back with the boy, you will find it easier to hire a chaise at Bath and travel post up to London.’

Rampton unlocked another drawer and took out a small canvas roll. He placed it on the desk, where it lay like a grey sausage.

‘Fifty guineas in gold,’ he said. ‘You must sign for it, of course, and we will require a full account of any monies you disperse. The sum should be ample, but in case of emergency here is a letter to Mr Green of Green’s Bank in Bath. It will authorize you to withdraw further funds. But I do not think you will need to trouble him.’

Savill took the papers and looked through them. Rampton pushed pen and ink towards him. Savill signed receipts for the money and the papers. He stowed them both in an inner pocket. He felt the weight of the gold dragging him down.

‘There’s more to this than the boy,’ he said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Rampton said. ‘I don’t follow you.’

‘All this. The money. This deed. The warrant. Your Mr Brown.’

‘My dear sir, you are allowing your fancies to run away with you.’ Rampton sat back and stared at Savill. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. ‘I have been quite candid with you. I want to restore Charles to his family. I want to bring him up as my heir. All these precautions are necessary solely because of the peculiar nature of his present guardians – and, indeed, the delicate nature of my own employment. Is all this so very strange?’

‘Pray, sir,’ Savill said, ‘what exactly is the business of this office?’

‘What? Oh, there’s no mystery about that. We are a sub-department of the Post Office. We are known as the Foreign Office, or the Black Letter Office, because we handle the foreign mails.’ Rampton rang a bell on his desk. ‘While you are here, it may be helpful for you to hear a little more about Charnwood.’

Malbourne entered the room. He inclined his head. ‘Sir?’

‘Charnwood Court, Malbourne – who owns the freehold?’

‘A lady named Mrs West, sir, the widow of the brewer. She resides at Norbury Park, I believe, when she is in the country. Charnwood is a house on the Norbury estate.’ Malbourne cleared his throat. ‘When she was in town in the spring, she was often seen in the company of Monsieur Fournier. In fact, I believe it was he who arranged the tenancy, and it is his name on the lease.’

‘That backsliding priest,’ Rampton said. ‘A traitor to his God as well as to his king.’

‘Yes, sir. He arrived in England after the massacres in September. I believe he took the lease for Charnwood in the spring, which suggests he is remarkably far-sighted. He declines to call himself an émigré, however.’

‘In other words, he’s sitting on the fence,’ Rampton said. ‘Waiting to see what happens with the King. Besides, most of his wealth is in France and he doesn’t want to lose it if he can help it. But he’s a clever devil, Savill – if he’s at Charnwood, he’s a man to watch.’

Malbourne cleared his throat. ‘And a charming devil, sir, as well. Monsieur Fournier is a man of great address and he is very adroit at worming his way into intimacy with those who he believes may further his interests.’

‘What if Mr Savill needs to summon a magistrate to enforce his claim?’

‘He should communicate with Mr Horton, sir, the Vicar of Norbury. He is the nearest Justice now. The village is less than a mile from Charnwood.’

Rampton turned to Savill. ‘The coach leaves tomorrow. You should be back with Charles by Saturday at the latest.’

Malbourne showed Savill out. The porter in the outer hall did not move from his stool when the inner door opened. His eyes were closed.

Malbourne stopped. ‘Jarsdel!’

The eyes snapped open. ‘Sir?’

‘Stand up and make your obedience, damn you.’

The porter rose from his stool with the caution of a snail emerging from his shell. He bowed ponderously.

‘This gentleman is Mr Savill,’ Malbourne told him. ‘He is a particular friend of Mr Rampton’s. If he calls again, you are to admit him directly and show him every courtesy. Is that understood?’

Malbourne followed Savill down the steps and on to the pavement.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said. ‘Jarsdel’s an insolent fellow. It amuses Mr Rampton to make a pet of him, and he’s inclined to give himself airs in consequence. If we do not bring him up occasionally, he grows intolerable.’

Savill smiled and nodded, but said nothing.

‘I hope your journey prospers,’ Malbourne went on.

All that money, Savill thought, all those papers – and all this for a little boy.

‘I wonder what it is you really do here, sir,’ he said.

Malbourne glanced back at the house and smiled: and that was all the answer he gave. ‘I wish you a safe journey, sir,’ he said. ‘And a happy return.’

Chapter Twelve

It took Savill over twelve hours to travel by the mail coach from London to Bath. Most of that time it rained.

He spent the night in Bath at the Three Tuns inn. It was still raining in the morning, when he hired a gig to take him to Norbury, with a groom to drive him. The owner of the livery stable told him that the village’s situation was remote, far from the nearest post road.

The chaise was open to the elements. Savill sat behind the driver. Despite his great coat, a travelling cloak, top boots and a broad-brimmed hat, the rain found ways to reach his skin.

Their road was narrow and winding; the rain filled the ruts with puddles and turned the higher parts to mud. The country was generously provided with hills, which no doubt would have afforded a variety of fine prospects if the rain and the mist had permitted Savill to see them.

As the day passed, they laboured on, mile after mile. The driver muttered under his breath. The horse was a tired, broken-down creature that seemed incapable of going much beyond a foot-pace. They stopped twice, ostensibly to rest the unhappy animal but really for the groom to dose himself against rheumatic fever with gin and hot water.

There was said to be an inn at Norbury. Savill had intended to put up there, order his dinner and then call at Charnwood Court to make the necessary arrangements to take the boy away in the morning. But he realized that he had been too optimistic before they had covered half their distance. They would be lucky to reach the village before evening.

The light was already beginning to fade when they came to a small but swollen river that surged between high green banks, its surface mottled with muddy froth. The lane passed over the river by a wooden bridge resting on stone piers that were coated on their upstream side with green slime.

The two men climbed down. The groom led the horse and chaise across the bridge, with Savill behind. The wood was slippery with moisture and in places had rotted away.

‘How far is it now?’

‘A mile, sir. Maybe.’

After another mile, by Savill’s reckoning, they were still no nearer the village. The lane narrowed again and began to twist and climb. They came to a sharp bend with a partly open field-gate on its outer edge. As they rounded the bend, they found themselves face to face with a bull.

It was a large brown animal that to Savill’s eyes seemed the size of a small cottage. The horse came to an abrupt halt, straining against the harness of the chaise. The bull had its back to them. For a moment no one moved. Then the great beast slowly turned round. It examined them with sad, incurious eyes. Its legs were coated with pale mud, which gave it the appearance of wearing stockings.

The groom stared open-mouthed at the bull. There was no room to turn in the narrow lane even if there had been time to do it. But the horse did not wait to be told what to do. It twitched violently and bolted to the right toward the field-gate. It blundered through the opening. The chaise followed. For an instant the right wheel caught on the gatepost. The horse strained forward. Suddenly they were through.

Just inside the gate, however, sheltering beneath the branches of an ash tree, were half a dozen cows, the bull’s harem. These came as a second, equally unwelcome surprise to the horse, which veered to the left, pulling the chaise after it.

It was unfortunate that at this point the field sloped steeply towards a hedgerow running from the lane. The chaise bumped down the incline, its wheels swaying and skidding. The horse stumbled as a hoof sank into the ground. Its momentum carried it forward but sharply sideways, dragging the chaise after it. The hoof came free.

The vehicle fell on its side, tipping out the two men. Wood splintered. The groom shouted an oath. The horse whinnied. Savill felt a stab of pain in his jaw. The impact had set off his toothache, which had been grumbling steadily since his departure from London.

When the pain subsided, he found he was lying on his side in the sloping field. He stared at the sky. Rain fell on his upturned face. The grass beneath him was soggy. Moisture seeped into his clothes. He heard the groom’s voice, swearing, a steady stream of obscenities.

Savill sat up and then rose unsteadily to his feet. The groom was on his back a few yards away. The horse was on its feet, though entangled with its traces, which still attached it to the chaise.

Savill looked up the field. The cows hadn’t moved. They were staring at the visitors with mild curiosity. The bull, however, was taking a more active interest. He had come through the gateway and advanced a few yards into the field. His head swayed from side to side.

‘Get up, you fool,’ Savill roared at the groom.

‘It’ll kill us, sir, I know it—’

‘Be quiet.’ Savill eyed the bull. ‘Free the horse.’

The groom stood up. ‘If that poor beast has to be shot, sir, the master will—’

‘Stop talking. Free the horse. Then we’ll find help.’

‘Help?’ the groom said. ‘Where?’

It was a reasonable question. They were in the middle of a field. Apart from the bull and the cows, there were no signs of life, nor any trace of human habitation. The hedge at the bottom of the field was a dense green wall.

‘The village can’t be far,’ Savill said.

The groom jerked his thumb towards the gateway. ‘I’m not going near that thing.’

Suddenly, the hedge spoke up. ‘Good afternoon,’ it said in a crisp, ladylike voice. ‘Are you in need of assistance?’

The young lady had a sunburned face and was dressed for walking. Her cloak was spattered with mud. She wore heavy winter pattens that squelched across the field as she approached. The town-bred groom stared at her, as well he might, to see a lady walking alone.

‘You’ve met with an accident, sir.’

‘You are quite right, madam,’ Savill said. ‘I am obliged to you for pointing it out.’

‘And I don’t much like the look of that bull.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘Is there a stile there, ma’am, or a gate?’ the groom burst out.

‘Of course there is. I didn’t get here by magic.’ She was still looking at Savill. ‘Just beyond that chestnut tree. Can’t you see it? There is a path along the field boundary.’

‘I think that animal’s coming,’ the groom said.

‘Unharness the horse,’ the lady told him. ‘What are you waiting for? Quick! Cut the traces if necessary.’

Her brisk tone freed the groom from his trance-like state. He unharnessed the horse with remarkable speed and led it limping down the field. It was fortunate that it hadn’t broken a leg.

Savill picked up his portmanteau and offered the lady his arm. The bull watched the proceedings.

‘It’s Farmer Bradshaw’s bull,’ the lady told him. ‘We shall send a message to Mr Bradshaw and have the animal safely confined. No doubt he will have your chaise brought up to the village.’

‘What’s left of it,’ Savill said. The chaise had a broken wheel and the end of the axle had splintered.

As they passed through the gate, he glanced back at the field. The bull had lost interest in them and was grazing beside his harem.

Savill felt ridiculous, even cheated. A crisis was one thing but an anticlimax was quite another, particularly one which must lead to so much inconvenience.

He walked with the lady along a narrow path, strewn with rocks, that ran between hedges. The groom followed, muttering under his breath, with the horse plodding after him.

‘It was most obliging of you to come to our assistance,’ Savill said, breaking the silence long after it had become awkward.

‘I don’t think I’ve provided much of that, sir.’

‘At least you had the kindness to come and share our fate.’

‘Don’t be too sure of that, sir.’ She smiled up at him, revealing very white teeth. She was older than he had thought, perhaps in her thirties. ‘I should have run off directly the bull began his charge.’

‘I hope we are not taking you out of your way.’

‘Not at all. Where are you going, sir?’

‘Charnwood Court.’ Savill flicked water away from his face. ‘Is it far?’

‘The other side of the village. I thought you might be going there.’

‘And why is that?’

‘You weren’t coming from the village or you couldn’t have got the chaise into the field, not with the gate at that angle. I suppose you might have been going somewhere in the village, but I can’t think where. I know you’re not expected at Norbury Park or the Vicarage. So that only leaves Charnwood, really. There’s nowhere else, you see. You can’t get any sort of vehicle much beyond Charnwood.’

There was a silence. The rain continued to fall steadily from a soft grey sky. Savill glanced at the lady. She had dark curls between the top of her collar and the brim of her hat.

He cleared his throat. ‘My name is Savill, ma’am. I have business with Count de Quillon at Charnwood. Perhaps you know the gentleman?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is to say, I have been introduced to him. Have you come far, sir?’

‘London, ma’am.’

‘It won’t help,’ the lady said.

Savill stared at her. ‘I beg your pardon. What won’t help?’

She glanced up at his face. ‘Brooding on your troubles, sir. It never answers.’

Norbury lay at the bottom of a dark, steep-sided coomb. Dilapidated cottages faced each other across the single street. The church was set back above the road among a huddle of gravestones. Chickens pecked the dirt and squabbled with one another.

At the upper end of the village was the inn where Savill had intended to dine and spend the night. The lady introduced him to the landlord, Mr Roach, a brisk, efficient man with bright eyes.

‘Mr Savill, sir, is it? Good day to you – we’ve been expecting you.’

‘Really? You surprise me.’

‘Yes, sir – they sent down from Charnwood two or three days ago to say you’d be coming. I’m to send you up to the house directly.’

‘I was intending to put up here.’

‘No, sir. Mr Fournier was most insistent, you are to go up to the house. But what’s happened?’

‘There has been an accident, Roach,’ the lady said. ‘We must send a message to Mr Bradshaw that his bull is loose. This poor gentleman’s chaise had a smash in Parker’s field because of it.’

It was arranged that the remains of the chaise would be brought to Mr Roach’s barn. The groom would stay the night at the alehouse and return with the horse to Bath the following morning to consult with the proprietor of the livery stables about what should be done and about the thorny question of obtaining compensation from Farmer Bradshaw. Savill, having left a sum of money to defray the immediate cost of this, would travel to Charnwood in a vehicle that Mr Roach had in his stable.

‘An admirable plan,’ the lady said. ‘Now my father will be wanting his tea, and you must excuse me.’

None of the men spoke as she walked away, lifting her feet high above the mud of the village street. She crossed the road and took a narrow path that ran between two stone walls. It led to the churchyard, higher up the slope of the valley. Beyond the church were the roofs of a house that looked more substantial than the cottages in the village.

‘Ah well,’ said Mr Roach. He squinted up at the sky. ‘We better get you up to Charnwood, sir, before it starts raining again.’

Twenty minutes later, a boy led out a small, sad pony attached to a two-wheeled vehicle that was the next best thing to a cart. Savill scrambled up to the seat beside Mr Roach. In the interim, they had become the focus of attention for a small but growing crowd that watched their every move with great interest. Some of the younger ones followed the chaise. Their comments floated up to him like a chorus of Somersetshire voices commenting on the action of a Greek tragedy.

‘Looks a cross one, don’t he? … Wish I’d seen him rolling in the mud … That bull wouldn’t hurt a fly. Reckon he’s scared of cows.’

As the road left the village, it turned and climbed. One by one, the followers dropped away.

‘Who is the lady, by the by?’ Savill said. ‘I didn’t catch her name.’

‘Vicar’s daughter, sir; Miss Horton.’ Mr Roach pointed to the right with his whip. ‘See that, sir? That’s Norbury Park. She’ll have been on her way home from there.’

In the distance, partly concealed in a fold of the hills, was a plain stone house of some size. Savill dredged a name from his memory. ‘Mrs West’s house?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Hardly the weather for a lady to walk out in.’

‘Lord bless you, sir, Miss Harriet don’t mind a bit of rain, no more than a duck does.’

They pulled up in front of a pair of gates set in a wall with a small cottage beside them. Mr Roach leaned out of the cart, rattled his whip on the bars of the gates, and shouted: ‘Hey, there!’ in a voice that was possibly audible in the village.

‘Deaf,’ he explained to Savill, lowering his voice to a normal volume. ‘I don’t know why Mrs West lets her stay there. The lady’s too soft-hearted, and that’s a fact.’

An old woman shuffled out of the cottage.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs White,’ Mr Roach shouted. ‘How’s your boy doing in the Dragoons? Keeping well, I hope?’

She appeared not to hear him.

‘Leave the gates open, will you? I shan’t be long.’ Mr Roach dropped a copper into Mrs White’s outstretched hand before passing into the drive. She nodded to him. She paid no attention whatsoever to Savill.

‘Poor woman,’ Mr Roach said to Savill as they rattled slowly up the drive. ‘Lost her husband last winter, one son went off to be a soldier and the other one fell under a wagon when he was drunk. Grandson works in the gardens here but he’s always in mischief. Maybe the good Lord knows what He’s about, but damned if I do.’

The light was already fading from the sky. Dead leaves on the ground muffled the sound of their wheels. The drive sloped steadily downwards.

‘Gloomy old place, eh, sir?’ Mr Roach said. ‘Wouldn’t want to live here myself. Dreadful damp. That’s why Mr West built the new house higher up on the other side of the valley.’ He grinned. ‘Still – better than living in France or heathen parts like that.’

Savill’s discomfort was steadily increasing. His clothes were soaked through. He had missed his dinner and he was ravenously hungry. Worst of all was the damage to his pride: he was aware how forlorn he must look. His arrival in this wretched chaise would hardly improve matters.

‘Sorry about the bumps, sir,’ Mr Roach said. ‘The back drive is even worse. That’s the one I generally use. But I reckon having you here turns this into a gentleman’s chaise.’

He burst out laughing. Savill bared his teeth in what he hoped might resemble an answering smile. The drive followed a bend and suddenly reached its destination. Now they were clear of the protection of the overhanging trees, Savill became aware of how hard the rain was falling.

‘Well, this is it, sir,’ Mr Roach said, raising his whip in a sort of salute. ‘Charnwood. Not to everyone’s taste, perhaps, but you know what the sailors say: any port in a storm.’

Chapter Thirteen

It is growing dark when Charles is summoned. Mrs Cox sends a maid to tell him that he must go at once to the library.

Monsieur de Quillon is seated in his armchair, his legs wide, stretched towards the fire. Dr Gohlis is in the shadows, idly turning a great globe that stands in the corner.

The Count beckons Charles towards him. ‘What’s this I hear?’ he says in his deep, hoarse voice. ‘You’ve fouled your bed again? It won’t do, do you hear? Not for someone like you.’

Charles wonders whether it would be different if he were like someone else.

‘I was going to have them thrash the nonsense out of you. But the doctor suggests we give you a chance to make amends.’

Charles glances at Dr Gohlis. He is surprised, and made wary, by the kindness.

The Count massages his temples with his fingers. ‘So if you start talking again, we’ll say no more about it. You won’t be beaten. The matter will be closed.’ He looks directly at Charles and says, almost as if they were equals, one man to another: ‘Well? What do you think?’

Charles would like to say, ‘Thank you, sir,’ but he can say nothing. He does not even bow.

The Count sighs and throws himself back in his chair.

‘It’s merely a matter of will,’ the doctor says, abandoning the revolving world and coming toward the fireplace. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, my boy. Nothing at all.’ He takes Charles’s chin and tilts it so Charles is forced to look directly up at him. ‘Open your mouth.’

Dr Gohlis prods Charles’s lips with his forefinger, forcing the mouth open. He pushes the lower jaw further down.

‘You see, my lord,’ he says, looking from Charles to Monsieur de Quillon, ‘the tongue, the vocal cords – everything is there for the production of speech, nothing is damaged.’ He releases Charles’s chin. ‘I am demonstrating to him that there is absolutely no medical reason why he cannot speak. The argument is addressed to his intellect – for, though he is still young, he has a rudimentary rational faculty, and we must make this our ally.’

‘I dare say, Doctor.’ Monsieur de Quillon takes up a paper from the table beside him. ‘But I don’t want to hear your lecture on the subject. Get on with it, man, will you?’

Charles glimpses a flicker of anger in the doctor’s face as the Count bends his great head over the paper. He is surprised to find himself entertaining the notion that grown-ups can like or dislike other grown-ups.

Gohlis brings his head down to Charles’s. ‘No one likes pain, do they, my boy? It is abhorrent to any rational being. And you, being human, are capable of reason, capax rationis. You will have enough Latinity for that. In other words, to put it as plainly as I can, this means that, if you have any choice in the matter, you will strive to avoid pain.’

Charles stares at the globe, which is no longer turning. He hears the rustle of paper and Monsieur de Quillon’s laboured breathing.

‘I intend to beat you for fouling your bed like a baby,’ Dr Gohlis says. ‘Unless – and listen carefully now – unless you say to Monsieur de Quillon, “I ask your pardon, monseigneur.”’

The words float into the air. There are black, buzzing insects, swirling, darting, following their own secret paths.

‘That is the rational thing to do, Charles. Your intellect knows that pain is not agreeable, and that it should be avoided if at all possible. You may do this very easily, simply by saying five words.’

Charles has not wronged Monsieur de Quillon. Or Dr Gohlis. He has wronged no one except perhaps the maid who changed his bed, the old woman who will wash his sheet, and the red-headed gardener’s boy who leads the donkey and the laundry cart up and down the back drive. But they would do all these things in any case; they are paid to do these tasks, so he cannot be said to have wronged even them.

‘You must understand what I am saying. I have already demonstrated to you that there is no reason, no physiological reason, for your silence.’

Surely you cannot apologize for something that does not deserve an apology to someone whom you have not harmed? It is not a rational thing to do. Why does the doctor not see that? Perhaps it is the doctor who is not a rational being.

‘Remember, my boy – you are capax rationis.’

Charles knows what the phrase means because the Abbé Viré, the priest who used to give him lessons, explained it to him long ago before he lost his wits. Man is a reasoning being, the old man told him, and that is why Charles is obliged to love God. Reason offers no other choice.

‘Will you speak?’ Dr Gohlis asks. ‘Will you?’

Charles says nothing.

There are footsteps in the hall. Monsieur Fournier enters the library. The doctor clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth and goes to stand by the window to look at the rain. Charles shrinks away from him, knocking against the globe.

Fournier’s eyebrows rise at the sight of the boy. His eyebrows are unusual because they have a kink in them in the outer edges. This makes him look elegantly surprised all the time. Charles thinks this may be misleading. Nothing really seems to surprise Fournier at all.

‘Still silent?’ he says.

‘It’s quite ridiculous,’ says the Count.

Fournier smiles and the crooked eyebrows ride even higher. ‘Mum’s the word,’ he says in English, though they have been talking in French until now. ‘That’s what the English say. Is it not droll?’

‘I confess the humour escapes me at present.’

Monsieur Fournier cocks his head. ‘It may have to escape you for longer. You remember the gardener’s boy?’

‘No,’ the Count said. ‘Why the devil should I?’

‘The one you thrashed the other day.’

‘Oh yes – what of him?’

‘His grandmother has been to see the Vicar, who is also the magistrate here. There is talk of an action for assault.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake – he’s only a peasant, and our own servant too. What is the difficulty?’

‘This is England,’ Fournier says.

‘Do they not beat their servants here?’

‘Yes, of course. But not as we do. You know the English – they do things differently. When it suits them.’

‘More fool them.’

‘Besides, in theory he’s in the employ of Mrs West. I think a few shillings should resolve it, as far as the boy and his grandmother are concerned. But it will be inconvenient if we upset Mr Horton any more than we already have.’

‘A village curé?’ the Count says. ‘What a country this is! What an absurd country.’

‘Yes, indeed. But Mr Horton is a gentleman, and a man of much influence in his own parish.’ Fournier smiled. ‘We would do well to make him obliged to us. And, fortunately, there is a solution to hand: Charles.’

‘Dear God, you speak in riddles this afternoon.’

‘It’s quite simple. Mr Horton believes in the power of prayer.’

‘Superstitious nonsense,’ Gohlis muttered.

‘That’s neither here nor there,’ Fournier says. ‘I shall write to Mr Horton before dinner. And you would do well—’ He breaks off and cocks his head. ‘What’s that?’

‘Someone coming up the drive, sir,’ Gohlis said. ‘We have a visitor. In a cart, of all things.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know.’

Fournier glances at the Count. For a moment the men do not move or speak. Everyone is listening. Rain patters on the long windows at the end of the room. Dr Gohlis laughs, a high, nervous giggle. Monsieur de Quillon scowls at him.

‘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.

Usually the pain was deep, chronic and continuous. But sometimes there were acute and penetrating additions, like flashes of lightning, of something far worse.

Today, Savill thought, seizing on another subject that might distract him from the pain, I have seen Augusta’s son.

He wished Lizzie had been here. He had not known that his daughter wanted a brother. Why had he never thought to ask?

He had brought the miniature of Lizzie. Perhaps he would show Charles what his sister had looked like when she was a child. Not at once, of course. He must wait until they had grown accustomed to one another’s company.

What would Charles say if he could speak? Had he been there when his mother was murdered? Had he seen her killed?

The lightning returned.

‘Ah!’ Savill said.

‘You must see Gohlis immediately,’ Fournier said behind him.

‘Later.’

‘No, no. Now. One cannot trifle with pain, sir.’

‘Indeed.’ Savill drew a deep breath. The lightning had receded for the moment. ‘Tell me, can Charles read and write?’

Fournier raised his face. In the clear light of morning, the eyes beneath the crooked eyebrows were a shade of brown that merged imperceptibly with green, like pond water. ‘Oh yes.’

‘So one may converse with him on paper?’

‘I’m afraid not. He used to be an apt scholar, but if you ask him to write anything now – anything at all – he will give the appearance of applying himself to the task with great industry. But the result of his labours is merely scratchings and scribblings. From a distance they mimic the look of handwriting. But when you try to read them all you see is a tangle of impenetrable marks.’ Fournier paused and his murky eyes seemed larger than ever. ‘The servants think he is either an idiot or possessed by the devil. If not both.’

‘And what do you think, sir?’

‘I am aware merely of my own ignorance.’ Fournier smiled, inviting complicity in a shared superior understanding. ‘Poor Charles almost certainly witnessed the murder of his mother. How can one predict or even understand the effect of such a shock on the delicate sensibilities of a child? He was always inclined to be highly strung and full of fancies.’

‘When will the Count be downstairs, sir? There are papers that—’

‘My dear sir, permit me to be frank: you are not well.’

Savill rubbed his forehead, and found it hot and damp to the touch. The pain was even there now, dull and throbbing. It had spread all over the head and even to the neck.

‘I must take Charles to London.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Fournier said. ‘Now pray sit down a moment. Your pacing is making me feel quite dizzy. You cannot take Charles to London now, not for a day or two.’

‘I can, sir.’ Savill sank into a chair. ‘I have full authority—’

Fournier flapped his napkin in mild reproof. ‘I know, sir, I know. I do not dispute that. All I am saying is that it is not practicable for you to travel. Your chaise is a wreck, I understand, and I hear this morning that the groom who brought you has taken your horse back to Bath. There is neither horse nor chaise for hire in Norbury. And I regret to say that our establishment at Charnwood is so limited that we cannot even send you to Bath in our own coach because we simply do not have one.’

‘There must be a way.’

‘Unless you wish to walk, sir, I’m afraid that you must send to Bath for a chaise to fetch you. And that will take at least two days. In which case, you might as well put the delay to good use by allowing Gohlis to deal with your tooth.’

‘A horse,’ Savill said. ‘Ah!’

Another blinding flash of pain destroyed everything but itself. As it receded, he became aware that Fournier was speaking.

‘… So, in the circumstances, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir. What is a blessing?’

Fournier smiled. ‘I was saying that, since today is Friday, and since the postboy has already called, it is unlikely that a letter could reach Bath until tomorrow evening. And I doubt a livery stable would wish to act on your instructions until Monday.’

‘I could not impose on you so long,’ Savill said, but feebly.

‘Nonsense, my dear sir.’ Fournier stood up and rang the bell. ‘Now – we shall find Gohlis, and he will deal with your tooth. And tomorrow morning our good Vicar will try his hand at a miracle with Charles. Who knows? One must always keep an open mind. Faith may succeed where science has failed.’

‘If I had a free hand, sir,’ Dr Gohlis said, opening the side door of the house, ‘I have no doubt that the boy would be speaking within days. More than that, I would most certainly have succeeded in eradicating his other undesirable habits.’

Savill winced as the rush of fresh cool air sent a needle of pain into his jaw. ‘Surely, sir, you have been in a position to treat him for nearly two months?’

‘That is precisely what I have not been able to do.’ The doctor glanced at him. He wore steel-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes into gleaming blue pools. ‘Once or twice I have been able to test the theory on him for an hour or two but that is all. But, in a case of this nature, it is imperative that a physician should have unfettered access to his patient and complete responsibility for his care. The Count refuses to surrender Charles to my control.’

For a moment they walked in silence down the flagged path beside the house.

‘I am afraid that he places too great a reliance on the theories of Rousseau,’ Gohlis continued. ‘Nature is a wonderful guide in the management of children, but it must not be our only one.’

‘What course of treatment would you recommend?’

The doctor’s lips moved silently as he considered the question. ‘If I were all-powerful, I should wish to know a great deal about the boy and his upbringing. Have you read Dr Gregory’s Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with Those of the Animal World? It is most instructive. I wonder, for example, whether Charles was fed at his mother’s breast or whether his parents hired a wet nurse.’

‘I cannot understand why that should be of any importance,’ Savill said.

‘That is because you are a layman, sir. A mother’s milk does more than nourish the body of an infant. It also imparts sentiments of virtue, even morality. If a woman feeds another’s child purely for mercenary reasons, then what nourishes the body does not nourish the soul as well, or not in the same way.’

‘His mother’s milk won’t cure him now.’ Savill spoke roughly, the toothache affecting his manners. ‘The boy has been mute for nearly two months.’

‘I agree, sir, it is very curious.’ The doctor was unruffled by Savill’s tone. ‘It’s a most unusual case, quite fascinating. And I believe our best chance of curing the patient is to rely not on the nostrums of the past, but on the philosophy of the future. Tell me, are you aware of the work of Karl Philipp Moritz? He edits a journal on what we physicians call Erfahrungsseelenkunde.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘I suppose one might translate the term as the empirical science of the soul. It is an inductive science above all. Facts should be the building blocks for theory, not the other way round. Moritz encourages his readers to write down their childhood memories, and to use them for self-analysis.’

‘Ow!’ said Savill. ‘I – I beg your pardon, Doctor.’

‘Not at all. My own view, sir, is this: the human mind is a complicated matter but there are always causes for any effects we perceive. Reason tells us that and natural philosophy confirms it at every turn. Somewhere there is a key to Charles’s silence. If we can find that key we may turn the lock and he will speak again.’

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