Читать книгу The Silent Boy - Andrew Taylor, Andrew Taylor - Страница 19

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.’